By Mike Farragher

One of Ireland’s most eligible bachelors has been captured and taken off the available list.

“We have wonderful news to pass on to everybody,” announced the Corrs on the web site. “Jim Corr is delighted to announce that last night he and his girlfriend, (former Miss Northern Ireland) Gayle Williamson, got engaged. The happy couple has been together for the last year and I’m sure everyone will join us in wishing them every future happiness.”

Everybody does, with the exception of those many broken hearted fans of the band.

In other band news, their long awaited traditional album, Home, has been enjoying monster success in Ireland and the U.K. Last Friday in RTE after the Late Late Show, executives from Warner Ireland called in to present the band with a plaque commemorating an astounding 1,000,000 Irish album sales in Ireland.

Aside from U2, the Corrs are only Irish band ever to sell over a million albums on their home turf.

“When you’re writing something, there’s always lots of pressure,” explains Andrea Corr in an extensive interview with Hot Press recently.

“There’s always that demand for the elusive hit. So that imposes the pressure. But for this record, there was none of that. So, it was really very enjoyable, the freedom of interpreting material, rather than having to write it. It was kind of exploratory as well – we knew the songs, but when you get closer to them, you learn so much. You see things in Irish music that you wouldn’t have thought were actually there.”

Puzzlingly, there is no stateside release date for Home yet, so go online.