1998 in Ireland - Events

Events

  • 1 January – The VECs of the towns of Bray, Drogheda, Sligo, Tralee and Wexford are abolished.
  • 14 January – The Planning Tribunal opens in Dublin Castle.
  • 27 February – Republic of Ireland qualifies for entry into the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union.
  • 15 March – Former Fine Gael Minister Hugh Coveney dies in a fall from a cliff in County Cork.
  • 10 April – Good Friday: the British and Irish governments and all the political parties in Northern Ireland (except the Democratic Unionists) sign the Belfast Agreement.
  • 22 May – The Good Friday Agreement is endorsed in a referendum by people north and south of the border.
  • 3 July – The boyband Westlife are formed.
  • 15 August – 29 people die in a bomb explosion near the centre of Omagh, County Tyrone, caused by the Real IRA.
  • 4 September – USA President Bill Clinton begins his second official visit to the Island of Ireland, his first was in 1995.
  • 20 September – TV3 goes on the air.
  • 26 November – Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Oireachtas.
  • 30 November – Unemployment falls by 20% with the number of people in work rising by 100,000.
  • 12 December – Members of the Labour Party and Democratic Left agree to merge.
  • 26 December – Great Boxing Day Storm ('Hurricane Stephen'): Severe gale force winds hit north west Ireland causing widespread disruption to services.
  • 31 December – The Punt is traded for the last time as the Euro currency is launched.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
    —Marilyn French (b. 1929)

    “The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on to find the positive conditions under which desired events take place, and that these can be just as scientifically investigated as can instances of negative correlation. This problem is beyond relativity.”
    —Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)