IRELAND : A troubled island
1921: Southern Ireland became ‘the Irish Free State’.
1937: Creation of a constitution and of an Independent State EIRE, with a President of the Republic elected every 7 years.
1938: the Irish writer and patriot Douglas Hyde became the first President of Eire, and De Valera became prime minister.
1949: Eire became the Republic of Ireland, a parliamentary democracy, formally free of allegiance to the British Crown and the Commonwealth of Nations.
From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, 'The Troubles' : There was a time of extreme violence in Ulster (Northern Ireland) between the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the British Army.
1972: Bloody Sunday took place in Derry, Northern Ireland – Catholic demonstrators were shot by the British army during a peaceful March. 14 innocents died. The British claimed they had been attacked by the IRA but nothing was ever proved.
Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2 - 1983)
1973 : The Republic of Ireland joined the EEC. Meanwhile, violence intensified in Ulster.
1997 : Mary McAleese was elected the eighth President of the Republic of Ireland. She was reelected in 2004. Born in Belfast in 1951, she grew up through 'The Troubles', her family was strongly affected by the conflict. She is the first president to come from Northern Ireland.
©Sherurcij
1998: The troubled stopped with the Good Friday Agreement on April 1998 and the creation of an Assembly in which Catholics and Protestants sit together in government.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair set up a new enquiry into the namely '“events of Sunday, 30th January 1972 which led to loss of life in connection with the procession in Londonderry on that day, taking account of any new information relevant to events on that day”..The 2005 final report established that "it is not possible at this stage to give any firm estimate of when the report is likely to be finished."
2005 :
the IRA destroyed all its weapons and declared the armed campaign over.
