'Examiner' at 180 - 1980-1989: The Buttevant rail disaster and Stardust tragedy defined a decade of hardship

Further tragedy struck in 1981 when the Stardust nightclub in Artane, Co Dublin, caught fire, resulting in 48 deaths, most of whom were aged between 17 and 23 years old.

A later enquiry found that at least one exit was locked and two others were obstructed.

In Northern Ireland, events surrounding the hunger strikes dominated the news for much of the year, with ten prisoners in Maze prison starving themselves to death, the first of whom was Bobby Sands.

For much of the 1980s, a great recession gripped the country, as unemployment and emigration rates climbed steadily, with entire classes of college graduates leaving the country.

In September of that year, the electorate voted two to one to place a ban on abortion in the constitution, though that didn’t stop thousands of Irish women from travelling to Britain for the procedure each year.

The treatment of women and children caught the attention of the nation once again in 1984, with the death of 15-year-old Anne Lovett while giving birth in secrecy, followed by the discovery of two bodies of recently-born children in Kerry.

Known as the Kerry Babies affair, it saw Joanne Hayes - whose own baby had been stillborn - being accused of murder, but these charges were subsequently dropped and a tribunal was set up to investigate claims that she and her family made false confessions due to pressure from gardaí.

In October of that year, the IRA bombed Brighton’s Grand Hotel, where Margaret Thatcher - alongside other members of the Cabinet - were staying at the time.

In June 1985, an Air India jet was blown up off the south west coast of Ireland - killing 329 people - with Cork city’s airport and main hospital becoming the main centre of operations.

Death returned to our door in 1987, when 11 civilians were killed after a bomb was set off in a community hall during a war memorial service in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.

The nation was also gripped by a countrywide hunt for Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) member Dessie O’Hare, also known as Border Fox, and who was eventually wounded and captured in an ambush by armed detectives in North Kilkenny.

Focus returned to the north in March 1988, as a result of a horrific sequence of interlinked killings by the three main sides of the conflict, beginning with three members of the IRA active service who were killed by British forces in Gibraltar.

Europe was changing at this time, the most obvious representation of which was the demolition of the Berlin wall in 1989.

At a glance

July 1981: Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married in London.

May 1981: Pope John Paul II was shot five times and wounded when he rode in an open car in St Peter’s Square.

1982: The Irish government outlawed corporal punishment from schools.

February 1983: The IRA kidnapped champion stud horse Shergar, who was never found. Later reports suggested the former Irish derby winner was shot dead when he became difficult to handle.

December 1984: Band-Aid, formed by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, was top of the charts with their song Do They Know It’s Christmas, released in aid of Ethiopia.

November 1985: The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed, which established a framework for conferences between the Irish and UK governments to discuss affairs in Northern Ireland.

1986: The Soviet Union slowly released details about the fire in the Chernobyl reactor, which killed several people and caused long-term effects from the radiation such as birth deformities in children.

June 1986: A referendum to allow divorce was rejected by 61% of the people who voted.

June 1988: The Irish soccer team defeated England 1-0 in the 1988 European championships, a win which is credited to Jack Charlton and his tactics of “put ‘em under pressure”.

May 1989: 45-year-old Rita Power from Co Galway became Ireland’s first Lotto millionaire when she won £1.2 million from the draw.