2012 in Ireland


Events during the year 2012 in Ireland.

Incumbents

January

  • The occupation of the Vita Cortex plant in Cork, which closed in December, continued into the new year.
  • 1 January – The Government stopped paying expenses to former taoisigh, while sweeping price increases for goods and services, and in value added tax, affected consumers when decisions announced in Budget 2012 came into effect. A controversial €100 household charge was applied, as were large increases in transport fares, motor taxation, and health insurance costs.
  • 3 January
  • * A large fireball was seen across Ireland. Astronomy Ireland calculated that it landed as a meteorite in the Irish Sea off County Louth.
  • * A new €2 coin was issued by the Central Bank of Ireland as it celebrated ten years of the euro.
  • * Occupy Cork: The NAMA-listed Stapleton House on Oliver Plunkett Street was occupied in the city.
  • 8 January – Fine Gael politician and RTÉ broadcaster Barry O'Neill was involved in controversy when photographs appeared on Facebook of his new wife giving Nazi salutes beside models of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis during their European honeymoon.
  • 12 January – Ulster Bank announced plans to cut 950 jobs from its Irish operations by the end of the year, with around 600 to be cut in the Republic of Ireland.
  • 13 January – The Criminal Law Act 2012, drafted after the 2004 death of John Ward, came into effect. The new home defence law allowed householders to defend their homes against intruders using reasonable force, including deadly force.
  • 15 January – A fatal fishing disaster occurred off the south west coast. Three bodies were later found; two others remain missing.
  • 16 January
  • * Seán Quinn, Ireland's richest person as recently as 2008, was declared bankrupt at the High Court.
  • * Proinsias De Rossa resigned as Member of the European Parliament for the Dublin constituency, to be replaced by Emer Costello.
  • 22–3 January – A strong solar proton storm created a rare display of the aurora borealis in Ireland that was observed by thousands of people in north County Donegal, and as far south as Charlestown, County Mayo.
  • 24 January – Debt campaigners dressed as zombies converged on the Irish embassy in Britain to highlight the presence of zombie banks such as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.
  • 25 January
  • * Ireland paid another €1.25 billion to Anglo Irish Bank bondholders against the wishes of Irish people.
  • * Protesters travelled from Galway to Dublin to rally outside Leinster House against the septic tank charge being brought in by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition.
  • * The websites of the Departments of Justice and Finance were disabled by a denial-of-service attack.
  • * The Office of the Data Protection Commission wrote to Dublin City Council about its giving the personal details of 140,000 customers to a private waste company called Greyhound.
  • 26 January
  • * An earthquake classified as minor struck County Donegal.
  • * Dublin officially began its term as the European City of Science 2012.
  • * Dáil Éireann passed the Water Services Amendment Bill, allowing the government to charge rural dwellers for their septic tanks, as well as to inspect them.
  • * Taoiseach Enda Kenny, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, told the world that Irish people "went mad borrowing" from a banking system that spawned greed.
  • * The High Court was told that 11 gardaí were investigating sinister goings-on at Anglo Irish Bank; Mr. Justice Peter Kelly called the revelation "extraordinary".

    February

  • 1 and 2 February – Jimmy Harte, a Labour Senator, was involved in controversy over contributions to a misleading story in the Irish Independent on a Polish woman's account of living in Ireland, and subsequent comments on Twitter, which he later withdrew.
  • 6 February – Workers at Galway Airport staged a sit-in to protest at the failure by management to guarantee that they will receive redundancy payments when their contracts expire.
  • 10 February – Eircom admitted that personal details of thousands of eMobile and Meteor customers and hundreds of Meteor staff were contained on three laptops stolen in December 2011.
  • 11 February – One of the largest protest marches in Cork city in recent years took place in solidarity with the Vita Cortex sit-in.
  • 16 February – Barry Doyle was convicted of the November 2008 murder of Shane Geoghegan.
  • 18 February – Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping began a three-day trip to Ireland.
  • 20 February – In "scenes reminiscent of the land wars of the 18th century", a group of housing activists and Joan Collins TD successfully prevented an attempted eviction by the deputy sheriff of a man from his home on Mountrath, County Laois.
  • 21 February – President Michael D. Higgins began his first official trip abroad when he went to London for three days, accompanied by his wife, Sabina. He met members of the Irish community and Irish emigrant welfare workers at the London Irish Centre in Camden, and later met London-based Irish business and cultural leaders. He toured the Olympic Stadium, undergoing construction, addressed the London School of Economics in a speech entitled, Of Public Intellectuals, Universities, and a Democratic Crisis, and attended a production of Seán O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock by Dublin's Abbey Theatre and the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain. He also attended a reception at the Irish Embassy.
  • 28 February – The taoiseach announced a referendum to be held on the Fiscal Compact.
  • 29 February
  • * Dozens of community groups from counties Donegal, Tipperary, Galway, Limerick and Kerry went to Leinster House to protest against austerity.
  • * Éamon Ó Cuív was sacked as Deputy Leader of Fianna Fáil and Communications Spokesperson of the party after a row with leader Micheál Martin over the Fiscal Compact referendum.
  • * Minister of State Seán Sherlock signed into law a statutory instrument to amend Ireland's copyright legislation in spite of 80,000 signatures being gathered to oppose the move.

    March

  • 7 March – The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland upheld a complaint against broadcaster RTÉ made by Seán Gallagher relating to the broadcast of an erroneous tweet that unbalanced a television debate during his presidential campaign.
  • 8 March
  • * The Garda Síochána destroyed the Occupy Dame Street camp in an overnight raid.
  • * Allied Irish Banks confirmed a plan to cut 2,500 jobs.
  • 9 March – Waterford City Council dismantled the Occupy Waterford campsite.
  • 13 March – County Donegal was struck by a magnitude 1.1 earthquake.
  • 14 March – The Government was defeated in a vote taken at a meeting of the Oireachtas finance committee after numerous Fine Gael TDs went missing. The motion, tabled by Peter Mathews who was then forced to vote against it following threats from his colleagues, proposed that Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan be forced to appear before the Oireachtas finance committee by the end of the month.
  • 15 March – A convicted Garda killer escaped from prison leading to a massive cross-border manhunt.
  • 18 March – Environment Minister Phil Hogan was involved in controversy over media reports on a crude sexual insult he admitted delivering to ex-Taoiseach John Bruton's former administrator at an Oireachtas golf outing in August 2011.
  • 22 March
  • * The Mahon Tribunal published it findings after 15 years of investigations.
  • * The Central Statistics Office published figures that showed Ireland had fallen back into recession in the final quarter of 2011, following an even larger contraction in the previous one.
  • 24 March
  • * Thousands of people packed to capacity the National Stadium in Dublin for a national rally to protest the household charge payment introduced in the last Budget. Crowds of people unable to get in gathered outside.
  • * Facing expulsion from the Fianna Fáil party, Bertie Ahern resigned before he could be ousted.
  • 25 March – Taoiseach Enda Kenny began a four-day trade mission in China.
  • 26 March – Facing expulsion, Pádraig Flynn resigned from Fianna Fáil before he could be ousted.
  • 27 March
  • * Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore announced the date of the referendum on the fiscal compact as Thursday 31 May.
  • * Video games retail company Game closed 277 shops with the loss of 2,104 jobs. Staff began a sit-in.
  • 29 March – The latest census results report from the 2011 Census were released by the Central Statistics Office Ireland.
  • 31 March – Ireland was reported by international media to be facing a popular revolt after government figures indicated less than half of the country's households had paid the new property tax by that day's deadline as thousands of people from across the country marched on the governing Fine Gael party's annual conference at the Convention Centre Dublin.

    April

  • 2 April – Female genital mutilation was made illegal by the enactment by President Higgins of the Criminal Justice Act 2012.
  • 3 April
  • * It emerged that six people had died at a private nursing home in County Donegal over the previous ten days.
  • * RTÉ's defamation of Father Kevin Reynolds: RTÉ head of current affairs Ed Mulhall retired, Ken O'Shea resigned from Prime Time and the programme was terminated.
  • 5 April – The majority of shareholders in support services company Siteserv voted to accept a takeover proposal from the Denis O'Brien-controlled Millington, worth €45 million. The controversial deal came after French company Altrad claimed it had tried to buy Siteserv for a higher price.
  • 11 April – Environment Minister Phil Hogan sought sanctuary in a Carlow cathedral after running away from protesters against his property tax in his own constituency.
  • 14 April – As the Labour Party held its centenary conference at the National University of Ireland, Galway, gardaí used pepper spray to hold back anti-austerity demonstrators protesting against government cuts on the grounds, with reports of a 13-year-old child being threatened with the spray as the building was locked down amid chants of "Revolution, revolution!" and a coffin draped in the Irish tricolour.
  • 17 April – Environment Minister Phil Hogan announced the establishment of Irish Water, as a subsidiary of Bord Gáis.
  • 19 April
  • * Gavin O'Reilly, chief executive of Independent News & Media, resigned after a long-running dispute with Denis O'Brien, the company's biggest shareholder.
  • * Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty was expelled from the Dáil after trying to question the appointment of a new Secretary General at the Department of Finance.
  • * A report commissioned by the Department of Health found significant increase in narcolepsy among individuals given the GlaxoSmithKline developed swine flu vaccine Pandemrix compared to those who did not receive the vaccine.
  • 24 April
  • * The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission ruled that there were no grounds for any criminal case against any of five officers involved in an incident on 31 March 2011 known as the "rape tape" controversy, resulting from the inadvertent video recording of a sergeant in a patrol car joking about the rape of two women.
  • * The aurora borealis returned to County Donegal, having already made a rare Irish appearance in January.
  • 25 April – A tornado was observed near Fintown in County Donegal.