Ahern and Paisley discuss political and economic developments in Northern Ireland and increasing cross-Border co-operation. The Taoiseach says he is honoured to visit the north Antrim heartland of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader.
“I do not believe even a year back it could have been envisaged we would have been together here,” Ahern says. “It is an honour to be here with the First Minister to talk about progress.”
Paisley jokes that Ahern and his entourage had held a prayer meeting in their helicopter hoping that they would not be pelted with snowballs by him, a reference to his famous protest when former Taoiseach Seán Lemass visited Stormont in 1965.
When asked about welcoming the Fianna Fáil leader to his constituency Paisley quips, “What I am saying is he is in under my control. This is a good day for work. It is a good day for our province. It is a good day for the whole of Ireland because we need help from outside. We cannot live on our own.”
Ahern and Paisley meet again the following week at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce AGM dinner where Paisley has been invited to be a guest speaker.
The engagement is the latest visit to the Republic by the DUP leader since the Assembly was restored in Stormont the previous May. The Taoiseach invites Paisley to the historic Battle of the Boyne battle site in County Louth in July where the DUP leader presents a 17th-century musket to Ahern.
Brennan moves to Melbourne, Australia in 1861 with his parents. He starts his career as a watchmaker and a few years later is articled to Alexander Kennedy Smith, a renowned civil and mechanical engineer of the period. He serves as a sergeant in the Victorian Engineers under the command of Captain John James Clark. He invents the idea of a steerable torpedo in 1874, from observing that if a thread is pulled on a reel at an angle with suitable leverage, the reel will move away from the thread side. He spends some years working out his invention and receives a grant of £700 from the Victorian government towards his expenses. He patents the Brennan torpedo in 1877. The idea is trialed at Camden Fort near Crosshaven, County Cork.
Brennan goes to England in 1880 and brings his invention before the War Office. Sir Andrew Clarke alerts the authorities to the possibilities of the torpedo if used in the defence of harbours and channels, and the patent is eventually bought for a sum believed to be more than £100,000 (£ 9,331,100 in 2019). In 1887 he is appointed superintendent of the Brennan torpedo factory and is consulting engineer from 1896 to 1907.
Brennan does much work on a gyro monorail locomotive which is kept upright by a gyrostat. In 1903 he patents a gyroscopically balanced monorail system that he designs for military use. He successfully demonstrates the system on November 10, 1909, at Gillingham, England, but fears that the gyroscopes might fail prevents adoption of the system for widespread use.
From 1916 to 1919 Brennan serves in the munition invention department. From 1919 to 1926 he is engaged by the air ministry in aircraft research work at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, and gives much time to the invention of a helicopter. The government spends a large sum of money on it, but in 1926 the air ministry gives up working on it, much to Brennan’s disappointment.
Brennan marries Anna Quinn on 10 September 10, 1892. The marriage results in a son and a daughter. He is created a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1892 and is foundation member of the National Academy of Ireland in 1922.
In January 1932 Brennan is knocked down by a car at Montreux, Switzerland, and dies on January 17, 1932. He is buried at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green, London, in an unmarked plot numbered 2454 that is opposite the Chapel record office. On March 11, 2014, TaoiseachEnda Kenny unveils a new gravestone for Brennan at St. Mary’s in a ceremony honouring the inventor’s life and career.
Gillingham Library retains the archive of his papers.
Harrington is educated locally at the Convent of Mercy in Kinsale, where she is one of only two girls in her class to sit the Leaving Certificate examination. Before entering politics, she works as a civil servant with the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. She marries Dan Desmond in 1958.
Desmond is elected to the European Parliament at the 1979 European Parliament election for the Munster constituency. However, her time in Europe is short-lived, as she returns to domestic politics when she is offered a position as Minister and the chance to impact upon national legislation. At the 1981 general election she switches her constituency to Cork South-Central. A Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition comes to power, and she is appointed Minister for Health and Social Welfare.
Desmond’s cabinet appointment is historic, as she is only the second woman to be a member of cabinet since the foundation of the state in 1922, and the first in any Fine Gael or Labour Party cabinet. Countess Markievicz had held the cabinet post of Minister for Labour in the revolutionary First Dáil in 1919, but only one woman had held cabinet office after the foundation of the state, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn of Fianna Fáil who was appointed as Minister for the Gaeltacht in 1979.
Desmond retires from full-time politics at the 1987 general election for health reasons. She dies suddenly in Cork, County Cork on January 6, 2005.
The Irish Management Institute, an educational institute in Dublin that offers Postgraduate Diplomas, Master’s Degrees, executive education programs and short courses in Business and Management, holds its inaugural meeting on December 9, 1952. In its role as a membership organisation it connects businesses around its mission of improving the practice of management in Ireland.
The idea for the institute originates from a committee set up by Michael Dargan, T.P. Hogan and other businessmen. The motivation is to establish an organisation that will further the science and practice of business management in Ireland. Those involved are inspired primarily by the American Management Association and The Conference Board. At the same time the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, has prompted a separate group of leading semi-state and private bosses into investigating a similar idea. Both groups merge and the inaugural meeting of the Irish Management Institute is held on December 9, 1952, in the Gresham Hotel. The founding chairman is Sir Charles Harvey.
The objective of the institute is to raise the standard of management in Ireland. Originally it does this through corporate and personal memberships, regular lectures and conferences, a journal called Irish Management, research and the establishment of a member’s library. After its first decade the institute becomes involved in management training courses.
Part of IMI’s original brief has been to encourage the universities to develop management education. In the early 1960s both University College Dublin (UCD) and Trinity College Dublin introduce master’s degrees in management. This is an indication of management’s growing stature as an academic discipline. In turn IMI creates the Sir Charles Harvey Award for exceptional graduates of these courses. The first recipient is Patrick J. Murphy.
IMI later goes on to become a provider of education. Its popular Certificate in Supervisory Management (CISM) is the first academic course run by IMI and is the institute’s first progression into all-island distance learning. In 1973 IMI partners with Trinity for the Master of Science in Management (MSc). The MSc epitomises IMI’s teaching philosophy and is notable for being the first management degree in the world to be based on action learning. Related courses follow over the next three decades. Other affiliations with Irish universities include a master’s in information technology development with NUI Galway and a research alliance with the University of Limerick. In 2003 IMI launches their support and delivery of the Flexible Executive Henley MBA programme.
An alliance between University College Cork and the Irish Management Institute is announced in June 2011 by TaoiseachEnda Kenny. The IMI and UCC had been collaborating since 2009. As of 2014, the majority of the degrees offered by the IMI are accredited by UCC. UCC controversially purchases the IMI and it is merged into UCC.
In the 1977 general election he is elected to the 21st Dáil for the new constituency of Dublin Ballyfermot. With the party’s loss of power in 1977, the new leader, Garret FitzGerald appoints Mitchell to the Party’s Front Bench as spokesman on Labour. At the 1981 general election Mitchell is elected for the Dublin West and Fine Gael dramatically increases its number of seats, forming a coalition government with the Labour Party. On his appointment as Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald causes some surprise by excluding some of the older conservative ex-ministers from his cabinet. Instead, young liberals like Mitchell are appointed, with Mitchell receiving the high-profile post of Minister for Justice, taking responsibility for policing, criminal and civil law reform, penal justice, etc. The Fine Gael-Labour government collapses in January 1982 but regains power in December of that year. Mitchell again is included in a FitzGerald cabinet, as Minister for Transport.
As Minister for Transport, Mitchell grants the aviation license to a fledgling airline called Ryanair on November 29, 1985. This is granted despite strong opposition by Ireland’s national carrier Aer Lingus. The issue of the license breaks Aer Lingus’ stranglehold on flights to London from the Republic of Ireland.
Mitchell, who is seen as being on the social liberal wing of Fine Gael, is out of favour with John Bruton when he becomes Fine Gael leader in 1990. When Bruton forms the Rainbow Coalition in December 1994, Mitchell is not appointed to any cabinet post.
Mitchell contests and wins Dáil elections in 1977, 1981, (February and November) 1982, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1997. He runs for his party as its candidate to become a member of the European Parliament in the 1994 and 1998 elections. He also is director of elections for Austin Currie, the Fine Gael candidate, in the 1990 presidential election.
In 2001, Bruton is deposed as Fine Gael leader and replaced by Michael Noonan. Mitchell serves as his deputy from 2001 to 2002. He also chairs the key OireachtasPublic Accounts Committee. The Committee’s work under his chairmanship is widely praised for its inquiry into allegations of corruption and wide-scale tax evasion in the banking sector.
Though regarded in politics as one of Fine Gael’s “survivors,” who holds onto his seat amid major boundary changes, constituency changes and by attracting working class votes in a party whose appeal is primarily middle class, Mitchell loses his Dublin Central seat in the 2002 general election. That election witnesses a large-scale collapse in the Fine Gael vote, with the party dropping from 54 to 31 seats in Dáil Éireann. Although Mitchell suffers from the swing against Fine Gael in Dublin, he is not aided by the fact that Inchicore, which is considered his base in the constituency has been moved to Dublin South-Central. He chooses not to run in that constituency as his brother, Gay, is a sitting Teachta Dála (TD) running for re-election for that constituency.
Mitchell earlier has a liver transplant in an attempt to beat a rare form of cancer which had cost the lives of a number of his siblings. Though the operation is successful, the cancer returns. Although he appears to be making a recovery, Jim Mitchell ultimately dies of the disease on December 2, 2002.
His former constituency colleague and rival, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, describes Jim Mitchell as having made an “outstanding contribution to Irish politics.”
The Anglo-Irish Agreement, an accord that gives the government of Ireland an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland, is signed by TaoiseachGarret FitzGerald and British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher on November 15, 1985, at Hillsborough Castle in County Down, Northern Ireland. Considered one of the most significant developments in British-Irish relations since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the agreement provides for regular meetings between ministers in the Irish and British governments on matters affecting Northern Ireland. It outlines cooperation in four areas: political matters, security and related issues, legal matters, including the administration of justice, and the promotion of cross-border cooperation.
The agreement is negotiated as a move toward easing long-standing tension between Britain and Ireland on the subject of Northern Ireland, although Northern Irish unionists, who are in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom, are themselves strongly opposed to giving their southern neighbour a say in domestic matters. Many political leaders, including Thatcher, who has been strongly committed to British sovereignty in Northern Ireland, have come to believe that a solution to years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland can only be achieved by means of an all-Ireland arrangement.
Such an attempt had previously been made in 1973. A power-sharing executive, composed of Irish nationalists as well as unionists, was set up in Northern Ireland, and Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave participated in talks with British Prime Minister Edward Heath that resulted in the Sunningdale Agreement. That accord recognized that Northern Ireland’s relationship with Britain could not be changed without the agreement of a majority of its population, and it provided for the establishment of a Council of Ireland composed of members from both the Dáil Éireann (the lower chamber of the Oireachtas) and the Northern Ireland Assembly. That agreement collapsed in May 1974 because of a general strike inspired by unionist opponents of power sharing.
In 1981 FitzGerald launches a constitutional crusade to make the reunification of Ireland more attractive to Northern Ireland’s Protestants. At the end of the year, the Irish and British governments set up an Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council to discuss matters of common concern, especially security. In 1984 the report of the New Ireland Forum, a discussion group that includes representatives of political parties in Ireland and Northern Ireland, sets out three possible frameworks for political development in Ireland: a unitary state, a federal state, and joint sovereignty. Of Ireland’s major political parties, Fianna Fáil prefers a unitary state, which Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party regard as unrealistic. They prefer the federal option.
In the improved political climate between Britain and Ireland, leaders of the two countries sit down to negotiations. Ireland and Britain agree that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, and an intergovernmental conference is established to deal with political, security, and legal relations between the two parts of the island. The agreement is a blow to Northern Ireland’s unionists, because it establishes a consultative role for the government of Ireland in the affairs of Northern Ireland through the Anglo-Irish Secretariat. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and other unionists denounce the agreement, and UUP members of Parliament resign their seats over the issue, although 14 are returned in by-elections in 1986. The party organizes mass protests and boycotts of local councils and files a lawsuit challenging the legality of the agreement. However, these efforts, which are joined by the Democratic Unionist Party, fail to force abrogation of the agreement.
Contacts between the Irish and British governments continue after February 1987 within the formal structure of the intergovernmental conference. Fears that the violence in Northern Ireland would spill into Ireland as a consequence of closer Anglo-Irish cooperation in the wake of the agreement proves unfounded, and the UUP decides to participate in new negotiations on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland in 1990–93. After republican and unionist forces declare cease-fires in 1994, the UUP reluctantly joins discussions with the British and Irish governments and other political parties of Northern Ireland. No deal accepted by all sides is reached until the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998, which creates the Northern Ireland Assembly and new cross-border institutions.
Reynolds is educated at Summerhill College in County Sligo and works for a state transport company before succeeding at a variety of entrepreneurial ventures, including promoting dances and owning ballrooms, a pet-food factory, and newspapers. In 1974 he is elected to the Longford County Council as a member of Fianna Fáil. He enters Dáil Éireann, lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, in 1977 as a member representing the Longford-Westmeath parliamentary constituency and becomes Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the Fianna Fáil government of Charles Haughey (1979–81). He is subsequently Minister of Industry and Commerce (1987–88) and Minister for Finance (1988–91) in Haughey’s third and fourth governments. He breaks with Haughey in December 1991 and succeeds him as leader of Fianna Fáil and as Taoiseach in February 1992.
The Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats coalition that Reynolds inherits breaks up in November 1992 but, after the general election later that month, he surprises many observers by forming a new coalition government with the Labour Party in January 1993. He plays a significant part in bringing about a ceasefire between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and unionist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland in 1994, but he is less effective in maintaining his governing coalition. When this government founders in November 1994, he resigns as Taoiseach and as leader of Fianna Fáil, though he remains acting prime minister until a new government is formed the following month. He unsuccessfully seeks his party’s nomination as a candidate for the presidency of Ireland in 1997. He retires from public life in 2002.
In tribute to emigrants who sailed to the New World on coffin ships, Coillte, a state-sponsored company in Ireland, announces on October 29, 1998 plans for the establishment of a forest plantation, the Forest of Dunbrody, on the outskirts of New Ross, County Wexford. The public, and particularly Irish Americans, are invited to buy a tree in the name of their loved ones. A total of 25,000 trees are planted, comprising species such as ash, oak, larch and Douglas fir.
The purpose of the plantation is to replace timbers used in the construction of the Dunbrody, a 176-foot-long replica of the Famine emigrant ships which left Ireland in the 1840s. The ship, which weighs 458 tonnes, is the culmination of a two-year, £4 million project, the inspiration of the JFK Trust.
The ship is a reconstruction of the original Dunbrody which operated out of New Ross, in all but its electrical and navigational equipment. It immediately proves to be a tourist attraction with over 30,000 visitors witnessing the traditional skills of 19th-century shipbuilding being carried out by a team of 30 trainees of Foras Áiseanna Saothair (FÁS), the Irish National Training and Employment Authority, and an international team of shipwrights.
Coillte, which had up to this point already sponsored much of the timber for the project, decides to establish a plantation of the same name as the ship after members of the building crew express an interest and as a demonstration of wood as a renewable resource.
After years of tireless effort the Dunbrody is finally ready to launch. Early on the morning of February 11, 2001 the gates of the dry dock are opened and the Dunbrody floats to her lines, ready to take her pace at the Quay of New Ross. The launch ceremony is attended by TaoiseachBertie Ahern and former United States Ambassador to IrelandJean Kennedy Smith.
On May 14, 2009, Byrne is a substitute for a Liverpool F.C. Legends XI that plays against an All Star XI in a Hillsborough Memorial match to mark the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. He represented the Republic of Ireland at U15, U16 and U18 levels.
In June 1998, Byrne attends an audition for new Irish boyband, where Boyzone manager Louis Walsh approaches him to join his new venture, Westlife. He joins Westlife along with Kian Egan, Mark Feehily, Shane Filan and Brian McFadden. With Westlife, he has had 25 top ten UK singles, fourteen of which are number one, seven number one albums and has sold in excess of over 45 million records worldwide. He also has a number one single in Ireland in 2002, alongside the Republic of Ireland national football team and Dustin the Turkey with the Irish 2002 FIFA World Cup anthem, “Here Come the Good Times (Ireland).” He also co-writes many of Westlife’s songs.
On September 7, 2012, it is announced that Byrne will be a contestant for the tenth series of Strictly Come Dancing. He is the ninth contestant to be eliminated. He is ranked number two on Ireland’s Sexiest Man of 2014.
In early January 2016, it is rumored that RTÉ had internally chosen Byrne to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2016. On January 13, he is confirmed to be the Irish singer for the 2016 contest in Stockholm with the song, “Sunlight.” He performs it in the second semi-final but fails to advance to the final.
Byrne’s wife Georgina is the daughter of former TaoiseachBertie Ahern, and they have twin sons, Rocco Bertie Byrne and Jay Nicky Byrne, and a daughter, Gia.
Catherine Coll is born on December 21, 1856, in Bruree, County Limerick and emigrates to New York City in 1879. She first takes a job with a wealthy French family that is living in Manhattan. This is where she allegedly meets Juan Vivion de Valera (born 1854), a Spanish sculptor who comes to the home of her employers to give music lessons to the children.
It is alleged that Vivion de Valera, always in poor health, leaves his young family behind in 1885 and travels to Colorado, hoping that perhaps the healthier air will help him out only to die within a few months.
Though Éamon de Valera’s official biography (Longford/O’Neill, Hutchinson, London, 1970) states that his parents were married at St. Patrick’s Church on September 19, 1881, the parish records show no record of any Coll–de Valera wedding either at St. Patrick’s or any church, nor were any civil records found, in the vicinity during the period from 1875 to 1887. Also, initially de Valera is not registered in his father’s name.
However, not merely is there no record of the wedding. No record exists of the existence of a “Juan Vivion de Valera” anywhere in the United States: no birth certificate, no baptismal certificate (if he was a Catholic), no marriage certificate and no death certificate. While it is possible that he was born abroad and so either had a foreign birth certificate or was not registered, the absence of a death certificate for someone stated definitely in Éamon de Valera’s family history to have died in the United States has puzzled researchers. Some scholars have questioned whether Juan Vivion de Valera ever existed.
There has been a mischievous suggestion that he was related to the French painter Achille Devéria as Éamon de Valera “was known to be particularly fond of his works.” This claim is hardly likely given that Devéria was a painter of erotica, and de Valera nothing if not a prude. It should also be noted that Devéria died in 1857, at least 20 years before Éamon de Valera was born.
It has also been alleged by some that Catherine Coll invented Juan de Valera to give her son legitimacy.
(Pictured: Irish republican leader and founder of Fianna Fail, Éamon de Valera, with his mother Catherine Coll, April 01, 1927)
seamus dubhghaill 