WED. OCTOBER 2, 1996: Police in New York seized two semi-automatic Uzi machine guns and charged two Irish Americans, Patrick McGinley (33) and Adrian Gallagher (39) in connection with the find.
Twenty-one mortars, frames and mortar tubes were discovered by 26-County police close to the north Louth Border at Hackballscross.
FRI. OCTOBER 4, 1996: A man was beaten with an iron bar in a sectarian attack in the nationalist Carrick Hill area of Belfast.
The number of people out of work in the 26 Counties was 281,400.
SAT. OCTOBER 5, 1996: An 83-year-old man was attacked and beaten at Carrick Hill by men who ran off up the Shankill Road. The man was taken to hospital with head injuries.
At least three flats on Stanhope Drive had windows broken by ball-bearings over the weekend of October 5-6.
MON. OCTOBER 7, 1996: A British soldier was critically injured and thirty other troops and civilians were hurt as two bombs went off within ten minutes inside the British army headquarters in Lisburn, outside Belfast.
The 26-County transport company, CIE, announced that it intends to shed between 780 and 800 jobs over the next two years from its three companies. Iarnród Éireann, Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus.
TUES. OCTOBER 8, 1996: A nationalist house on the loyalist Black's Road area of Belfast was stoned and petrol-bombed.
WED. OCTOBER 9, 1996: Councillor Joe O'Neill, a Republican Sinn Féin member of Bundoran Urban District Council was raided by ten members of the Special Branch at his home at 10am.
The home of Tommy Morris at Newpark, Kiltoom, County Roscommon was raided by five members of the 26-County Special Branch from Athlone from 4 to 4.30pm.
A former British army press officer in Occupied Ireland, Colin Wallace, who received a 10-year prison sentence in 1981 for the manslaughter of antiques dealer Jonathan Lewis in 1980, had his conviction quashed by the London Court of Appeals.
Two Provisional prisoners, Paul Kavanagh and Thomas Quigley, both serving long sentences for a bombing campaign in Britain in 1991 were told by the authorities in Long Kesh Concentration Camp that a parole board will never consider their release.
The Indian Steel manufacturer, Ispat, which took over the formerly state-owned company Irish Steel in Cork Harbour announced that there are to be 22 redundancies at the plant, leaving the workforce at 340.
THURS. OCTOBER 10, 1996: Darren Murray, an 11-year-old boy from Garvaghy Park, Portadown, died in Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital two days after he was knocked down by a van on the Corcrain Road in Portadown, Co Armagh.
Four cars belonging to nationalists on Wyndham Street, off the Cliftonville Road, Belfast were daubed with the letters 'UVF'.
The home of Sean Greene of Auburn Villas in Athlone was subjected to an hour-long search by four plainclothes Special Branch.
FRI. OCTOBER 11, 1996: The home of Jimmy Doyle at Knockdomney, Mount Temple, Moate, Co Westmeath was raided by a party of six Special Branch who arrived from Athlone in two cars.
SUN. OCTOBER 13, 1996: British Conservative MP Peter Thurnham defected to the opposition Liberal Democrats inflicting another blow to Prime Minister John Major on the weekend following the Tory party conference in Bournemouth.
TUES. OCTOBER 15, 1996: After four months of talks about procedure the Stormont talks moved into a plenary session following a deal between the UUP and SDLP late the previous night.
Verbatim Ltd of Limerick, which manufactures floppy disks for computers, laid off 220 staff at its plant at the Raheen Industrial estate.
WED. OCTOBER 16, 1996: A contingent of Crown Forces consisting of British soldiers and RUC came under attack as they approached the nationalist Kilwilkie estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh.
FRI. OCTOBER 18, 1996: A couple in a "mixed" marriage and their 13-year-old daughter were forced to leave their home in Killinchy, County Down after four years of sectarian intimidation by loyalists. David Boyce, a Protestant from County Down and his wife Ann, a Catholic from County Kerry, began to experience intimidation when they moved into Ardview estate in the largely unionist town of Killinchy in 1992.
26-County police and army discovered a large amount of bomb-making material, guns and ammunition on the Louth-Armagh border, concealed in plastic barrels in loosely constructed stone walls on farmland just 500 metres from the Border.
Robert James Stewart, with an address at the loyalist Selshion Parade, Portadown appeared before Craigavon Magistrates Court on charges of carrying a gun while under the influence of alcohol. He was fined £200.
There are now 102,100 people unemployed in the Six Counties.
SAT. OCTOBER 19, 1996: At the monthly meeting of the Ard-Chomhairle of Republican Sinn Féin in Dublin a resolution was passed that the organisation "earnestly consider contesting the forthcoming Westminster election on an abstentionist basis" in consultation with the membership.
Bus-loads of soccer fans, many of them as young as four years old, experienced a night of terror as their coaches came under attack from a frenzied Orange mob in Portadown, County Armagh.
High praise was lavished on pan-nationalist frontman, SDLP leader John Hume, for his assistance in facilitating the march of Orange triumphalists through Derry's Bogside by the Apprentice Boys' governor, Alistair Simpson, who in his tribute to Hume said "his statement had helped to ease tensions". Simpson vowed to maintain contact with Hume.
Loyalists clapped and cheered as Apprentice boot-boys played 'The Sash' and other provocative songs at Society Street within earshot of Bogside residents. The paramilitary British police (RUC) forcibly removed a token two protesting residents from Derry's walls.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Ulster Unionist Party in Ballymena, Co Antrim, David Burnside, a leading member based in London said that fifteen to twenty per cent of Catholics in the Six Counties are "pure rebels who can never be dealt with and must be defeated."
TUES. OCTOBER 22, 1996: In his maiden speech to the Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synod the Church of Ireland Archbishop Walton Empey, roundly condemned the Orange Order for their use of church property as a springboard for attacks on their Catholic neighbours.
THURS. OCTOBER 24, 1996: Patrick Kelly was released from Portlaoise jail in the 26 Counties in order to receive medical treatment.
A group of Dundalk, County Louth residents were given leave in a 26-Countycourt to sue British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and the 26-County state over the operation of the Sellafield nuclear plant and the failure of the Dublin administration to make effective protests against the plant.
FRI. OCTOBER 25, 1996: The court of appeal in Belfast dismissed applications for a review of the British policy in the Six Counties banning lawyers from being present when their client is being questioned by the RUC.
The High Court in Dublin made an order for the transfer of three Provisional prisoners in Britain to a jail in the 26 Counties. The order was sought by the 26-County minister for justice Nora Owen in respect of Michael O'Brien, Derek Doherty and Pauric Mac Fhloinn.
SAT OCTOBER 26, 1996: Bobby 'Basher' Bates, a prominent member of the British-backed death squad the UVF and its most notorious unit, the Shankill Butchers, is to be released from jail within a year having begun a programme of weekend and day releases.
A ruling allowing the Dundalk residents to sue the British-based company in a 26-County court was upheld on October 24.
SUN. OCTOBER 27, 1996: Five men -- Hugh Wilkinson (44), Paul Murray (24), Bernard O'Hagan (35), Patrick Kavanagh (33) and Patrick Gerard McCartney (45) -- appeared in the Special Court on October 28 and were charged on seven counts of possession of arms and explosives. An improvised grenade launcher and two automatic rifles, several hundred rounds of ammunition, walkie-talkies, balaclavas, all-weather clothing, food supplies and training manuals were amongst the items seized by the 26-County police.
MON. OCTOBER 28, 1996: A University of Ulster researcher, PhD student Graham Ellison revealed that he had taped testimony that many members of the British police in the Six Counties, the RUC, would have downed their shields and walked away if the Drumcree stand-off in July of this year had continued.
TUES. OCTOBER 29, 1996: Tommy Stewart, the 32-year-old UVF leader in north Belfast, was shot dead as he and a friend were walking near his home at 2am.
THURS. OCTOBER 31, 1996:
The deputy leader of the 26-county administration and leader of the Labour Party, Dick Spring, said that a referendum would not be required for the state to join the NATO-sponsored "Partnership for Peace" (PFP).
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