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Gerry Adams leadership timeline

Gerry Adams pictured after winning the West Belfast seat at Westminster in 1983. Picture by Pacemaker
Gerry Adams pictured after winning the West Belfast seat at Westminster in 1983. Picture by Pacemaker Gerry Adams pictured after winning the West Belfast seat at Westminster in 1983. Picture by Pacemaker

November 13 1983 – Gerry Adams is elected as President of Sinn Féin following the resignation of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh. He had previously served as vice-president from 1978.

March 14, 1984 – Mr Adams is shot and wounded in a loyalist paramilitary gun attack in central Belfast

November 1986 - Sinn Féin allows its members to take seats in the Dail

November 9, 1989 - The Berlin wall comes down

July 29, 1991 - Sinn Féin's youngest MLA Megan Fearon is born

April 9, 1992 – Gerry Adams loses his Westminster seat to the SDLP's Joe Hendron

May 10, 1994 - Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa's first black president

August 31, 1994 – IRA announces its first ceasefire

February 9, 1996 – IRA ceasefire ends with London’s Docklands bomb killing two and injuring over 100

May 1, 1997 – Mr Adams regains his West Belfast Westminster

July 1997 – The IRA announces its second ceasefire

May 22, 1998 – Good Friday Agreement approved by voters north and south

August 15, 1998 - Omagh bomb kills 29, including a woman pregnant with unborn twins

September 11, 2001 - Almost 3,000 killed when New York's Twin Towers collapse in a terrorist attack

October 14, 2002 - Northern Ireland Assembly suspended with a government unable to be formed again before the 2007 election

February 2004 - Facebook launched

May 2007 - Power-sharing returns to Northern Ireland after an historic meeting between DUP leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams.

June 20007 - First Apple iphone goes on sale

May 6, 2010 - Mr Adams elected in West Belfast for a fourth successive term as MP

November 2010 – Mr Adams announces he is to step down as MP and MLA to stand as a TD in the Republic.

March 2011 – Mr Adams is elected to the Dáil, topping the Louth constituency

January 2017 - Power-sharing collapses in Northern Ireland, ending more than a decade of joint-rule between unionist and nationalist politicians.

March 21, 2017 - Former Deputy First Minister and Sinn Féin leader in the North Martin McGuinness dies at the age of 66

September 5, 2017 - Gerry Adams says he will detail Sinn Féin’s "planned process of generational change" if he is re-elected as President at the party conference in November.