Famine commemorated in Cork

The west Cork town of Skibbereen will hold the first annual National Famine Commemoration this week.

From this year onwards a national ceremony will be rotated around the provinces - it will not return to Munster again until 2013.

An estimated 1.5 million people either died or emigrated during the Great Famine in the 1840s.

As well as the events in Cork, an international commemorative ceremony will be held at the Gross Ile Quarantine Station in Canada, where thousands of Irish people were processed.