The year in review

This was a year of breakthrough developments in the North, with the setting up of an executive in Stormont in May and the arrival of an upbeat Ian Paisley in Dublin for an historic handshake with Bertie Ahern.

As he and Martin McGuiness take office as First and Deputy First Ministers, Ian Paisley says on May 8: “In politics as in life, it is a truism that no one can ever have 100% of what they desire. They must make a verdict when they believe they have achieved enough to move things forward.”

President Mary McAleese hails “an extraordinary day in the history of Northern Ireland, the island of Ireland and indeed of relations between Ireland and Britain”.

Progress in the North, and the timely maturation of the last of the SSIA accounts, do no harm to Fianna Fáil’s election performance in May. The party wins a third term in power under Bertie Ahern, and Brian Cowen takes over as Finance Minister. The Greens enter Government for the first time as junior coalition partner, with the support of the Progressive Democrats and several Independent TDs.

The election sees the highest turnout for 15 years, at 67.3%.

May also sees the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann, abducted while on holiday in Portugal as her parents eat dinner a short distance from the room in which she is sleeping. Police confirm the evidence indicates that she has been kidnapped.

July sees the conviction of Joe O’Reilly for the murder of his wife Rachel, in part due to mobile phone evidence that placed him near their home of the day of her death.

Also in that month, gardaí believe they have made the State’s largest ever cocaine seizure after a dinghy capsizes off the West Cork coast. Around 55 bales of cocaine are recovered, worth more than €100m.

Family tragedies

Cocaine is in the news again at the end of the year when model Katy French dies in her sister’s arms, after an apparent cocaine overdose at a party to celebrate her 24th birthday.

Family tragedies stun communities at opposite sides of Ireland in April and November; All seven members of the McElhill family die in November in a fire at their home, started by father-of five Arthur McElhill.

The 39-year-old, his partner Lorraine McGovern, 30 and their children - Caroline, 13, Sean, seven, Bellina, four, Clodagh, 18 months and baby James - died together when fire engulfed their three bedroom end-of-terrace house in Omagh.

The McElhill and McGovern families agree after two weeks to hold a single service for the family but that Mr McElhill would be buried separately from his family afterwards.

The McElhill deaths follow those in Wexford earlier in the year of the Dunne family. Adrian Dunne took his own life after strangling his 24-year-old wife Ciara and smothering his two daughters, five-year-old Leanne and three-year-old Shania, in their home in Monageer in April 2007.

Diagnosis delays

A brave Susie Long lays bare the inequities in parts of the health service when she reveals that she had to wait seven months for a test to diagnose her bowel cancer because she was a public patient.

Minister for Health Mary Harney acknowledges on Susie’s death in October that the health service had failed the mother of two. Susie’s family says the delay in her diagnosis happened because St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny had missed out on an endoscopy unit in the last recession and a long waiting list had developed as they operated out of a spare room with six trolleys.

Sporting moments

In sport, Padraig Harrington gets the nation cheering by winning the British Open, and Ireland manager Steve Staunton exits stage left in October with a €800,000 pay-off, after a disastrous stint at the helm of the national team.

The highlight of the rugby year is undoubtedly Ireland’s 43-13 victory over England at Croke Park in February. Eddie O’Sullivan says the “chokers” tag applied to Ireland after the defeat to France had spurred on the team. No doubt!