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:

    “Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!”
    —Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)

    “If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
    —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)