February 2014
History Selection |
![]() Thomas Mooredied
February 1852 |
![]() Charles Duffydied
February 1903 |
![]() William O'Briendied
February 1928 |
![]() Maurice Walshdied
February 1964 |
![]() Dermot Morgandied
February 1998 |
![]() Benedict Kielydied
February 2007 |
Ireland in 2000 |
January 10th: Loyalist Richard Jameson was shot dead. January 12th: Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin met the American president Bill Clinton at the White House. January 28th: Death of Tony Doyle, actor. February 3rd: John Gilligan was extradited from the UK to Ireland on drug trafficking and murder charges. February 7th: The Chester Beatty Library opened in new premises in the grounds of Dublin Castle. |
![]() Extradition of John Gilligan |
![]() Jonathan Bowman |
February 11th: The Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland were suspended. February 19th: Ireland recorded their biggest ever victory over Scotland in rugby. March 3rd: Death of Jonathan Philbin Bowman, TV presenter and journalist, aged 31. March 27th: The Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday began public hearings in Derry. |
March 28th: Ireland secured their first rugby victory in Paris in 28 years. April 10th: The Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council was established. April 20th: Police shot dead John Carthy after a 25 hour siege at his home in Abbeylara. May 4th: British PM Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern arrived in Northern Ireland for talks as part of a review of the Good Friday Agreement. May 9th: The Chief Constable of the RUC announced that five military installations would close. |
![]() John Carthy |
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May 27th: The Ulster Unionist Council announced support for the UUP's leader David Trimble to re-enter the power-sharing Executive with Sinn Féin. May 30th: Devolution was restored in Northern Ireland. June: It was reported that a record number of women were travelling to Britain for abortions. June 26th: The IRA issued a statement saying that it had opened some arms dumps to be viewed by independent weapons inspectors. |
July 2nd: It was announced that 2,000 soldiers would be drafted to Northern Ireland to help police the Loyalist marching season. July 6th: The Intoxicating Liquor Act came in effect, abolishing the 'holy hour' on Sunday afternoons when pubs were forced to close. July 28th: The final paramilitary prisoners were released. August 21st: Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood were killed as the ongoing Loyalist paramilitary feud erupted into further violence. September 21st: In the South Antrim By-election, the DUP took what had previously been second safest UUP seat. |
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![]() Bill Clinton and Bertie Ahern meet earlier in 2000 |
October: Westlife scored their seventh straight UK number one, the only artists in UK chart history to do this. November 18th: Death of Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh, physicist. December 12th: Bill Clinton arrived in Dublin. December 13th: Bill Clinton met with political leaders in Northern Ireland. December 15th: The UDA and UVF released a statement announcing the end of hostilities. |
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![]() Girl musician, by Rose Shaw ![]() Irish children, by Rose Shaw ![]() Musician, by Rose Shaw |
Freedom of Angels Publisher: O'Brien Press Date published: 1993 ![]() Bernadette Fahy tells the story of her childhood in Goldenbridge, the orphanage to which she was committed at the age of seven. While her brothers escaped as ten-year-olds to a kinder institution, avoiding the harshness of Artane, Bernadette remained where she was until sixteen, at which age the orphans were released, without preparation and with their self-esteem deliberately destroyed, into the outside world. It took many years for Bernadette to recover – not aided by a rejecting mother who had married again and would not tell her step-children she already had a family. Conditions at Goldenbridge were so tough, Bernadette compares them to a concentration camp. Children slept in dormitories, from which they were woken twice a night to relieve themselves. Bed-wetting was dealt with cruelly. The children's day consisted of awful meals, substandard schooling, dreary religious services and hard labour, including the obligation to make sixty rosaries a day. Physical violence was the norm; Bernadette recalls a girl being struck for weeping on the day she'd heard her brothers were dead. A particularly haunting memory involved the 'rec' room, where young children would be ordered to sit in silence, watched over by their stern-faced carers. Any noise or movement resulted in a savage beating. Bernadette herself was violently attacked for talking in the dormitory, an experience that left her with deep psychological scars. While Bernadette was incarcerated, the rest of the country seems to have been oblivious to what was taking place in the church-run orphanages and industrial schools. The children regularly went out with families who treated them well. Outsiders laid on parties and events for them. Bernadette's own mother sometimes gave her expensive gifts, apparently unaware that conditions at Goldenbridge meant she could not keep them. Reflecting on her experiences, Bernadette ascribes this brutality to the religious framework of self-denial and self-punishment in which the nuns existed, as well as to the impossibility of a small group of often untrained adults caring for a mass of children, many already damaged by their home backgrounds. |
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