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.
Read more about this topic: 1998 In Ireland
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden into history, it is the stories we didn’t write, the questions we didn’t ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)