13 February – The Bishop of Clonfert, Thomas Ryan, protested against the content of The Late Late Show because an audience member, Eileen Fox, told host Gay Byrne that she wore no nightie on her wedding night. The episode was broadly referred to thereafter in Ireland as the Bishop and the Nightie scandal.[1][2]
A teenage riot took place in the early hours at Dublin Airport when singer Dickie Rock returned from his joint-fourth-place success at the Eurovision song contest in Luxembourg. Gardaí linked arms and struggled to contain the surging mob of 1,000 over-excited young people, twenty of whom were taken to hospital.[4]
The Broadcasting Authority (Amendment) Act changed the name of the national broadcasting authority from Radio Éireann to Radio Telefís Éireann.[5]
15 April – Construction of Ireland's first high-rise flats began in Ballymun, Dublin.
17 April – The Easter Rising was commemorated in Belfast by large Republican parades.
1 June – Presidential election: De Valera was re-elected president. He defeated Tom O'Higgins by 10,500 votes, less than one percent of the ballot (0.97%).[8][9]
25 June – De Valera was inaugurated for a second seven-year term.
21 September – Allied Irish Banks was founded by the amalgamation of the Munster and Leinster Bank, Provincial Bank of Ireland, and Royal Bank of Ireland.
21 October – An anti-apartheid demonstration took place outside the National Stadium during a visit by the South African Amateur Boxing Team.
8 November – Tributes were paid to Seán Lemass who announced his resignation as Taoiseach.
10 November – The new taoiseach, Jack Lynch, and his ministers received their seals of office from President de Valera at the president's residence, Áras an Uachtaráin.
25 November – The body of the second President of Ireland, Seán T. O'Kelly, lay in state at St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral.
28 February – The first English-language production of Samuel Beckett's Come and Go took place at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin. It was first produced on 14 January in German, in Berlin; it was also first published, in French, this year.[14]
18 July – The new Abbey Theatre in Dublin opened exactly 15 years after the original was burned down;[15] the architect was former actor Michael Scott.