• Rating list 1996, vol. 8, no. 4, August-September 1996, pp. 6-15
• Announcement, vol. 9, no. 3, June-July 1997, p. 27
• Irish Championships 1997, Colm Daly, vol. 9, no. 4, August-September 1997, pp. 12-21

• Scores and places
• ICU games archive (81 games, of which, as of October 28, 2018, at least one (Ryan-Daly, round 5) incomplete)

• 1996-1998 Irish games database (80 games, including full Ryan-Daly game from round 5) (original source CHESS IRELAND Archive)
• News and Results – Jan 97/Feb 98 (via the Wayback Machine) (summary report, leading scores & places, summary results of concurrent events)

• Cork Examiner (Jim Olney)
• August 12, 1997 p. 21 (report, leading scores, scores of O'Donovan - Ryan, round 4 and Daly - Keogh, round 1)
•  
• Sunday Independent (Michael Hennigan)
• August 10, 1997 p. 51
• August 17, 1997 p. 57 (annotations of Keogh - S. Brady, round 5 and Cafolla - Brady, round 1)
•  
• Suday Tribune (John Hurley)
• July 27, 1997 p. M-39 (report, annotation of O'Donovan - Ryan, round 4, results of most subsidiary events)

• Irish Championship 1997, November 1, 1997

• "(age)" denotes the player's age on his or her birthday that year (regardless of whether the birthday fell before, during, or after the event)
• "x-ch" denotes former Irish champions
• "ch#" denotes the number of championships the player played in, including this one
• "ol" denotes members of the previous Olympiad team (Yerevan 1996)

• "RR" denotes editorial comment

• FIDE ratings are from the July 1996 list
• ICU ratings are from the 1996 list

"Irish Champion
Of course this was a dream come true for me. I always knew in my heart and soul that some day I would win the national championships, since by the law of averages I had to win it sometime, but to be honest I was getting a bit worried as the years went by and I still hadn't done it. To win it on a record score of 8½/9 was more than I could have dreamed of. Both Stephen Brady's and Colm Daly's scores (8 and 7 respectively) would normally have been enough to win outright, but not that year! I drew with Stephen on the black side of a French defence in round two, and won all of my other games, to turn in a 2600+ performance. Normally this would have been good enough to have wrapped up the title with a couple of rounds to spare, but Stephen was also playing remarkably well that year, and going into the final round we were both on 7.5/8. It was my old club mate from Dun Laoire, Tony Fox, who finally put a stop to Stephen's run by holding him to a draw in the last round, which meant that I had won the title outright. I felt a bit sorry for Stephen, but then, as people reminded me, he had already won the Irish twice, and this was my year. It was a great feeling to finally win the title, having come close on a number of occasions, and one that I will never forget."

• v1.0 (31 Oct 2018): first published version
• v1.1 (27 Jan 2019): corrected date of C. Brady - Roberts, round 3 (1997.07.13 → 1997.07.14); minor formatting modification; added extra indexing information in playable game files
• v1.2 (5 Jan 2021): added references to Cork Examiner article of August 12 and Sunday Independent article of August 17, added corresponding references in four games, and added two games from the latter article to Annotations index; added light notes to Cafolla - S. Brady, round 1 and McMahon - Ryan, round 7 modified "Tie break" entry in Information → Basic data; added "Débuts and final appearances" entry in Sources and notes → Notes; added link to Teachers' Club web site in Information → Basic data → Venue; added local version of irl96-98.zip file and modified reference in Sources and notes → Sources → CHESS IRELAND accordingly; changed dead links to version from the Wayback Machine and modified http links to https where possible
• v1.3 (15 Apr 2023): added Michael Crowe as Tournament Director in Information → Basic data; added Elibility; modified "Tie-break" entry; added Time control; added Schedule; noted Clarke - O'Connell, round 3, as loss on time; added notes to many games, based on report in Irish Chess Journal and Sunday Tribune article, and modified Annotations index; added new analysis of Fox - S. Brady, round 9; added ICU ratings and clubs; added links to ICJ articles in Sources and notes → Sources; modified selection of Interesting games; added names of winners of First Weekender in Concurrent events; added first names for winners of Second Weekender in Councurrent events; added link to previous IRLchess posts in Sources and notes → Sources; added "(age)" for O'Kearney and Roberts, based on years of birth reported on https://icu.ie/players page; changed "age" to "(age)" in Pairings & results, and modified Key in Sources and notes → Notes; added reference to Sunday Tribune article in Sources and notes → Sources; added "Discrepancies" entry in Sources and notes → Notes; modified format to show direct link to "Sources and notes" page from every page, rather than having to go via Information → Basic data; changed "Tie break" to "Tie-break" (one place); added "irlch1997_tables.txt" file in directory; added XML directory and file; modified spacing in Pairings & results