Violence and unemployment dominated public life. In the North, there was no sign that the Provisional IRA had any intention of letting up on its campaign to kill for a United Ireland.

The spectre of a failed State was also haunting life south of the border. Economically, it looked as if the place might be left behind as the world changed. What emerged from the morass was a genuine brain drain, the first arguably suffered by the country.

Young people were leaving in their droves but, unlike their forebears in the 50s, this cohort were generally more educated and better equipped to begin anew on foreign shores.

Before parsing the darker nature of the year, there was something early on that provided distraction and mirth. Around lunchtime on Thursday, February 14, in St Mary’s Church in the village of Asdee, Kerry, a statue of the Sacred Heart was reported to have crooked a finger at a local girl and invited her to come over. So it was began the phenomenon of the moving statues.

Fintan O’Toole, in his personal history of the country We Don’t Know Ourselves, recalled going to Asdee to check out this supernatural happening.

“By the beginning of March, up to 6,000 people were turning up at the church on Sudays,” he writes.

A barrier had to be built around the statues to stop people scratching off fragments as relics. Within weeks, statues were moving all over the country

"From Asdee, the phenomenon spread to Ballydesmond, near the Cork border, and then to Ballinspittle, where — by late July — the statue of the Virgin in the grotto was moving so spectacularly that CIE was laying on special bus services for the huge crowds.”

Some speculated that the phenomenon represented a subterranean attempt to hold onto the mystery of the religion that had dominated since before the birth of the State but was now looking shaky? Others thought it was the best craic to having during a recession.

The loosening of the grip of the Church was most evident in how there was now at least dissent when edicts were handed down.

The Kerry Babies Tribunal that was underway in the early part of the year was a monument to old Ireland, but the protests and support from the woman at the centre of it, Joanne Hayes, showed that times were a changing.

A Labour TD, Mervyn Taylor, introduced a bill to legalise divorce. It was defeated, but paved the way for a referendum the following year. While that was also narrowly defeated, it demonstrated that there was a restlessness that would not be quelled.

On April 30, the Dáil debated a motion on the blight of unemployment in Cork. The fare presented a stark picture that was evident around the country, but particularly in some black spots like Leeside.

Local Fianna Fáil deputy Denis Lyons painted a stark picture. He told the House that, in 1981, Cork had a 8.6% unemployment rate. That figure had now more than doubled to 17%. In the city alone, the unemployed rate had gone from 12% to 21% was was still rising.

“Yet the taoiseach has said on many occasions that we have turned the corner, that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Lyons opined.

“I suggest that he will need to turn a few more corners and see more light in many more tunnels as unemployment continues to rise, emigration grows, and closures continue.”

Some 57 people died violently in the North throughout the year. As the men of violence on both sides determined that their way was the only way, politicians did their best to point a new way forward.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving the Republic a limited say in the North, was signed on November 15. Unionists reacted with outrage, displaying the intransigence that had led to the explosion of the statelet nearly 20 years earlier. The killing continued. Hope remained a hostage in hiding for now.

On July 25, the country was whacked with one of the worst — and most spectacular — storms ever witnessed here.

“Widespread and spectacular thunderstorm activity occurred throughout the evening of [July] 25, and continued overnight and into the morning of July 26,” Met Éireann reported.

Hundreds of farm animals were killed by lightening, and large hailstones damaged tillage crops and crops of apples and fruit

“The flooding which accompanied the storm affected farm buildings, houses, supermarkets, and stores in the worst hit areas.”

The report today looks quaint. Back then, such an event was considered random, plucked from the array of moods that could descend from the skies. Today, it would be greeted with foreboding — one more signal that the planet’s ecosystem is heading into the darkest recesses of climate change.

Still, it wasn’t all doom layered with gloom. There was music, laughter, and the froth of life we know as sport. In June, one Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band rolled up to Slane Castle to make his Irish debut.

It would be the beginning of a mutual appreciative relationship that persists to this day. A record crowd of around 100,000 were sardined into the venue that slopes down to the Boyne to hear The Boss sing about how he was born in the USA and why that wasn’t necessarily all it was cracked up to be.

The following month, the ghosts of the founding fathers of the GAA spun in their graves as the games’ cathedral, Croke Park, was subjected to a rock concert headlined by U2.

Sporting milestone

The same month, Live Aid took place in London and Philadelphia. It was the brainchild of Bob Geldof, and the Wembley leg would be remembered as a major staging post in the ascent of Bono and his band en route to conquering the world.

In March, the Irish rugby team won the Triple Crown and Five Nations championship. This was the second time in four years reaching the milestone. While the game was — and remains — a minority sport, it did provide a brief jab of confidence to a country badly in need of a lift.

Then there was the Clones Cyclone, Barry McGuigan. He was crowned world featherweight champion in June after a bout in London. McGuigan’s personality and ability earned him a place in the national psyche but, being a child of the borderlands, it was his attitude to the ongoing conflict that elevated him further. A Catholic married to a Protestant, he refused to take sides or even brandish a Tricolour that had been hijacked by the men of violence.

“The fact that I wouldn’t wear green, white, and gold or put on a sign that said this is who I represent was powerful,” he later remembered. 

It was a very mature and dangerous thing to do. I wouldn’t chose sides. People appreciated that

So it went for our better selves during a year when life in general was less than full, yet it remains the fact that, through the soft lens of nostalgia, it still has an alluring sheen to it.