Parliament of Ireland

The Parliament of Ireland (Irish: Parlaimint na hÉireann) was a legislature that existed in Dublin from 1297 until 1800. In its early medieval period during the Lordship of Ireland it consisted of either two or three chambers: the House of Commons, elected by a very restricted suffrage, the House of Lords in which the lords temporal of the peerage of Ireland and lords spiritual (higher clergy) were represented (subject to periodic exclusion of Catholic peers) by a third body, a House of Proctors, which consisted of representatives of the lower clergy, which sometimes seems to have sat as a separate house, on other times as part of the House of Commons.

The main purpose of parliament was to approve taxes that were then levied by and for the Lordship of Ireland. Those who would pay the bulk of taxation, the clergy, merchants and landowners, naturally comprised the members. In 1541 the parliament voted to create the Kingdom of Ireland.

Over the centuries, the Irish parliament met in a number of locations both inside and outside of Dublin - the first place of definitive date and place was Castledermot, County Kildare on 18 June 1264 some months earlier than the first English Parliament containing elected members. Among its most famous meeting places were Dublin Castle, the Bluecoat School, Chichester House and, its final permanent home, the Irish Parliament House in College Green.