HEROES:When Sonia O'Sullivan won a silver medal in the women's 5,000m at the Olympics in Sydney in September, she lifted the spirits of the nation and exorcised some of her own personal ghosts. Gabriela Szabo of Romania crossed the line first but for our best-ever female athlete the medal helped wipe the memory of the 1996 Atlanta games, when she crashed out so traumatically. In Cork, 10,000 people lined the streets to welcome the Cobh athlete as she travelled to City Hall for a civic reception.
VILLAINS
The dogs in the streets may have known it for years, but direct evidence of planning corruption was hard to find, despite the expensive efforts of the various tribunals. Then in April, former Fianna Fáil press secretary, PR man and fixer Frank Dunlop admitted to the Flood tribunal £112,000 was paid to 15 Dublin councillors before they voted on the Quarryvale shopping centre proposal, finally confirming suspicions that brown envelopes were an integral feature of the planning process during the 1980s and 1990s.
NON-EVENT
Computer geeks and doomsayers were agreed on one thing: that the start of the new year would herald a disaster of apocalyptic proportions, with aircraft falling from the sky, and everything from home PCs to government networks crashing. A programming oversight meant dates were shown in two digits, so 1999 would became 99, and when the new year began it was feared computers would “think” it was 1900. In the run-up to Y2K billions were spent anticipating the Millennium Bug, and it goes down in history as one of the greatest disasters that never was.
WIN
Bill Clinton served his maximum two terms, and the race to elect a new president of the US in November saw Republican candidate George W Bush win out against Democrat Al Gore in the closest American election since 1876. The counting of the votes in Florida – and its controversial outcome, where Bush was declared winner – introduced the world to the “hanging chad”, a fault on the voting card that made the intention of the voter difficult to decipher.
BREAKTHROUGH
Since 1978, when taxi drivers won a court case to restrict their numbers, Dubliners had suffered the misery of long waits and a dire taxi service. In November, minister of state Bobby Molloy announced that he intended to put an extra 700 taxis on the streets before Christmas. It caused an immediate, city-choking taxi strike, but deregulation went ahead, the public got a service and taxi plates fell in value from €100,000 to €5,000 almost overnight.
REALITY
The decade of the reality TV show began with the launch of Big Brotheron Channel 4. Anna Nolan, an Irish lesbian ex-nun, was the runner-up, and it was a sign of how much Ireland had changed that this dose of reality didn't cause even a ripple of public outrage. Instead of milking a tabloid fortune, the Dublin woman went on to carve out a successful media career. Audience figures for the once-mega show have plummeted and it is due to be axed after the 2010 series.
LOOK BACK 2001
VILLAINS
On September 11th, 3,000 people were killed when 19 suspected members of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation, hijacked three planes and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. On October 7th, the US invaded Afghanistan, from where Bin Laden was believed to have launched his attacks
HEROES
Fr Mychal F Judge, a Franciscan priest of Leitrim parents, became the first recorded victim of the World Trade Center attack. His body bag was numbered "victim 0001". A fire department chaplain, his brave work on the day came to symbolise the selfless endeavours of the New York police and firefighters to rescue workers trapped in the towers. He was killed when the South Tower collapsed.
OUTBREAK
An outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK prompted a series of – ultimately unsuccessful – measures by the Irish government to prevent the spread of the disease to the Republic, amid fears for our farming, agri-food and tourism industries. Disinfectant mats at ports and airports and even in the doorways of public buildings in cities and towns were some of the more visible initiatives, and several large public events were cancelled.
BREAKTHROUGH
In a year of tense and frustrating peace negotiations in the North – including scenes of sectarianism as Catholic children were attacked on their way to Holy Cross school in Belfast – in October the IRA announced the first act of decommissioning, prompting a return to power-sharing. In November, the RUC was disbanded to make way for the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
BUSINESS
The dot.com bubble burst, bringing with it massive worldwide lay-offs in the IT sector, a loss of confidence in the markets generally and fears of a recession. Warren Buffett, the US's most celebrated investor, gave his stock tips and sounded a rallying cry for the old economy: "We have embraced the 21st century by entering such cutting-edge industries as brick, carpet, insulation and paint."
BUST
In October, Apple boss Steve Jobs announced that "listening to music will never be the same again" as he launched the iPod. And it wasn't just hype. The first model held 5GB of music – about 1,000 songs – and cost £349. It became the must-have Christmas gift of the year. It even looked great. With music available for purchase online though iTunes, the user-friendly iPod changed the way music was bought and listened to.
COMPILED BY BERNICE HARRISON
