Notable Legislation
During the previous years many notable Acts of social legislation were pressed for and passed in Ireland’s interest:
- The creation of the Congested Districts Board in 1891, which built public works for, and provided employment in, the poor districts of western Ireland.
- The extensive 1898 Local Government Act abolished the old landlord-dominated Grand Juries and replaced them by forty-nine county, urban and rural district councils, managed by Irish people for the administration of local affairs. The councils were very popular in Ireland as they established a political class, who showed themselves capable of running Irish affairs. It also stimulated the desire to attain Home Rule and to manage affairs on a national level. A less positive consequence was that the councils were largely dominated by the Irish Party, becoming the wielders of local patronage.
- Irish Department of Agriculture Act and Technical Instructors Act (1899) (initiative of Horace Plunkett)
- Tenant Land Purchase Acts: (Wyndham Act 1903 and Birrell Act 1909), contributing greatly to the solution of the contentious land question
- Labourers (Ireland) Acts (Bryce Act 1906 and Birrell Act 1911) (the Sheehan Acts), providing rural labourers with extensive housing
- Town Tenants Act (1906)
- Evicted Tenants Act (1907)
- Old Age Pensions Act (1908)
- Irish (Catholic) University Act (1908)
- Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Act (1908) (the Clancy Act)
Read more about this topic: Irish Parliamentary Party
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or legislation:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)