STORY:
Northern Ireland Lights Up

Every household in Republic will light a candle on New Year's Eve Residents of Northern Ireland plan to ring in the new century in a unifying manner. In what is being called "Last Light", every household in the Republic will receive a millennium candle to light when the sun sets on New Year's Eve.

According to the Belfast Newsletter, candles will be delivered to 1.28 million homes along with a parchment-style scroll for those present at the lighting to sign as a testimony of where they were at the turn of the millennium. The idea allows families to mark the arrival of the Year 2000 without staying up until midnight.

The last light in Dublin will be at 4:16 PM, when President Mary McAleese will officially start the event, lighting her candle at Aras An Uachtarain. Darkness will then fall across the rest of the country in a matter of minutes, with Dunsey Head, Co Cork, believed to be the last piece of land to see natural light in Ireland - and possibly Europe - this millennium.

Nobel Literature Prize-winning poet, Seamus Heaney, has been commissioned to provide the words - a brief couple of lines - on the scroll, which will be signed by McAleese and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

A midnight fireworks display is still being planned along the banks of the River Liffey. Also, 11 bridges spanning the river in the heart of the Irish capital will be illuminated, transforming them into a "Liffey of lights".

Source: Belfast Newsletter

DATE: 9/14/99

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