Public Ceremonial in The Irish Houses of Parliament
Much of the public ceremonial in the Irish Houses of Parliament mirrored that of the British Houses of Parliament. Sessions were formally opened by a Speech from the Throne by the Lord Lieutenant, who "used to sit, surrounded by more splendour than His Majesty on the throne of England". The Sovereign's official representative, when he sat on the Throne, sat beneath a canopy of crimson velvet. As in the English and British parliaments, the House of Lords was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, who sat on the Woolsack, a large seat stuffed with wool from each of the three kingdoms, England, Ireland and Scotland. Wool was seen as a symbol of economic success and wealth. At the State Opening of Parliament, Members of Parliament were summoned from the nearby House of Commons chamber by Black Rod, a royal official who would "command the members on behalf of His Excellency to attend him in the chamber of peers".
In the Commons, business was presided over by the Speaker, who in the absence of a government chosen from and answerable to the Commons was the dominant political parliamentary figure. Speaker Conolly remains today one of the most widely known figures ever to be produced by an Irish parliament, and not just for his role in Parliament but also for his great wealth that allowed him to build one of Ireland's greatest Georgian houses, Castletown House.
Sessions of Parliament drew many of the wealthiest of Ireland's Anglo-Irish Ascendancy to Dublin, particularly as sessions often coincided with the Irish Social Season, running from January to 17 March (St. Patrick's Day), when the Lord Lieutenant presided in state over state balls and drawing rooms in the Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle. Leading peers in particular flocked to Dublin, where they lived in enormous and richly decorated town houses, initially on the Northside of Dublin, later in new Georgian residences around Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. Their presence in Dublin, along with large numbers of servants, provided a regular boost to the city's economy.
The abolition of the Parliament in 1800 had a major economic impact on the life of the city. Within a decade, many of the finest mansions (including Leinster House, Powerscourt House, and Aldborough House) had been sold, often to government agencies. Though Parliament itself was based on the exclusion of the vast Irish Catholic majority in Ireland, many nationalist historians and writers blamed the absence of Parliament for the increased impoverishment of Dublin, with many of the large mansions in areas like Henrietta Street sold to property developers and landlords who reduced them to tenements.
The draw of the Viceregal Court and its social season was not enough to encourage most Irish peers and their large entourage to come to Dublin any more, their absence and that of their servants, with all their collective spending, severely hitting the economy of Dublin, which went into dramatic decline. By the 1830s and 1840s, nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell was leading a demand for the Repeal of the Act of Union and the re-establishment of an Irish parliament in Dublin, only this time one to which Catholics could be elected, in contrast with the entirely Anglican assembly that had met in the old Houses of Parliament.
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