The Family Law (Divorce) Act 1996 came into operation on 27 February 1997. It provided the legal machinery through which Irish courts could grant decrees of divorce following the narrow approval of the Fifteenth Amendment referendum in 1995. For the first time since the foundation of the State, a marriage could be legally dissolved in the Republic under specified constitutional conditions.
The central event was an invasion of Munster directed against Donnchad mac Briain, son of Brian Bóruma and the long-ruling head of the Dál Cais. Donnchad had inherited only part of his father’s authority after the losses at Clontarf in 1014. By the late 1050s his position was being undermined by external rivals and by his nephew Toirdelbach Ua Briain, whose father, Tadc, had been killed in 1023 at Donnchad’s instigation.
