The republic of Ireland, separated from Great Britain by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St. George’s Channel, shares its island with Northern Ireland to the northeast. Area: 70,285 sq km (27,137 sq mi). Pop. (1994 est.): 3,512,000. Cap.: Dublin. Monetary unit: Irish pound (punt), with (Oct. 7, 1994) a free rate of £Ir 0.64 to U.S. $1 (£Ir 1.01 = £1 sterling). President in 1994, Mary Robinson; prime ministers, Albert Reynolds and, from December 15, John Bruton.
In November 1994 the coalition Labour/Fianna Fail government fell in highly dramatic circumstances. Difficulties had been growing between Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, leader of Fianna Fail, the larger party in the coalition, and the Labour leader, Dick Spring. Trust between the two broke down completely over the appointment of the attorney general as president of the High Court at a time when serious questions had been raised over his failure to extradite to Northern Ireland a priest under investigation for child molestation offenses. Reynolds went ahead with the appointment without the support of the Labour ministers, who immediately withdrew from the government. In attempts to salvage the administration, Reynolds withheld from members of Parliament a vital piece of information concerning the delay in extraditing the priest--who by then had been convicted--information that the leader of the Labour Party knew had been supplied by the new attorney general. On November 16 Spring announced his resignation as deputy prime minister and that of his ministers. The next day Reynolds announced his resignation as prime minister and that of his ministers, and the newly appointed president of the High Court also announced his resignation.
Now serving as acting prime minister, Reynolds did not ask the president to dissolve Parliament, and negotiations began almost immediately to form a new administration. Despite his belief that trust and accountability had been destroyed between the coalition partners, thus causing the collapse of the government, Spring opened a series of talks with the new leader of Fianna Fail, Bertie Ahern. On December 15, John Bruton, head of the Fine Gael party, was elected prime minister with the help of the Labour and Democratic Left parties, both of which would be members of the new coalition government.
A number of events during the year had heightened tensions within the Labour/Fianna Fail government. In June a passports-for-sale scandal erupted. It emerged that an Arab family had been given Irish passports in exchange for a large investment in the prime minister’s family business. Further investigation revealed that this was not an isolated incident and that the process, personally supervised over a period of some years by Reynolds’ predecessor, Charles Haughey, had not been subject to audit or control. The deputy prime minister called for an investigation and declared that if there had been wrongdoing he would resign. Subsequently he was shown documents connected with the granting of passports and declared himself satisfied.
Elections to the European Parliament, combined with two by-elections, took place on June 9, and public apathy was apparent from the turnout of only 50%. Government parties suffered a major setback, losing both by-elections and experiencing a collapse of the Labour vote in the European Parliament election. A major surprise was the election of two Green Alliance candidates.
In January the government dropped Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, which had been introduced by the 1973-77 government. This had denied the nationalist party Sinn Fein access to the airwaves. The repeal was believed to have been part of an overall strategy to bring about a cessation of violence by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) following the historic agreement by the British and Irish prime ministers in December 1993. This important breakthrough was widely welcomed and was considered to offer Northern Ireland its best chance of peace in a quarter of a century.
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Both governments held firm to the jointly declared positions of December 1993, and on August 31 the IRA announced the "cessation of military operations." It did not, however, include the word permanent in its statement. But the overall message soon became clear: the IRA, its long campaign of violence having failed to budge the British government, or change appreciably the political landscape in Northern Ireland, was prepared to adopt a new strategy involving democratic politics and debate.
Low and stable interest rates, improved consumer confidence, and rising disposable incomes all contributed to strong economic growth in Ireland in 1994, with the gross national product rising 5%. Inflation remained at 2.5%. But the introduction of a budget that provided government funds for economic development failed to expand the job market. Unemployment remained at 282,000. Two major industrial disputes--one in Irish Steel and the other in Team Aer Lingus--with more than 2,000 jobs hanging in the balance were finally resolved in the autumn.
See also United Kingdom.