Irish Houses of Parliament: Encyclopedia II - Irish Houses of Parliament - The Dáil choses a different home

Irish Houses of Parliament - The Dáil choses a different home

For whatever reason however the 'Bank of Ireland' as it was generally called, remained untouched. When in 1919, Irish republican MPs elected in the 1918 general election assembled to form the First Dáil and issue a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, they chose not to seek to use the old Irish parliament house but instead the Round Room of the Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. (Ironically the Round Room had more royal connections than the Houses of Parliament; it had been built for the visit of King George IV in 1821) Though even if it had sought to use the old parliament house, it is exceptionally unlikely that the Bank of Ireland, then with a largely unionist board some of whom were descended from members of the former House of Commons and House of Lords, would have supplied the building for such a use, not least because it was also a working bank and the Bank's then headquarters . When in 1921, the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, created in the Fourth Home Rule Act (known as the Government of Ireland Act 1920) met (or supposedly met, only four MPs, all unionists, turned up for the state opening of parliament by the Lord Lieutenant), it assembled not in the old Parliament House but in the Royal College of Science.

In 1922, when the Provisional Government under W.T. Cosgrave made plans for the coming into being of the new Irish Free State, it gave little thought to using the old Houses of Parliament as the parliament building for the new state. Though larger than the building eventually selected, Leinster House, it possessed three major practical problems:

• It was the working headquarters of Ireland's major bank, which would need to have an alternative headquarters provided, were the state to use the building for parliamentary purposes;

• It lacked room around it for the provision of additional buildings to be used for governmental purposes. Directly behind it, on the actual location of Chichester House, there was now a major street called Fleet Street. In front of it on both the Lords and Commons entrances were major thoroughfares, College Green and Westmoreland Street, meaning that the only space for expansion was on its Foster Place side, yet here too there was little potential for the constitution of government offices. (In contrast the eventual choice, Leinster House, possessed the Royal College of Science, parts of which the state immediately 'borrowed' to use as a cabinet office, a prime ministerial office and offices for several ministries);

• While in the 18th century the fact that one of its House of Lords entrance opened directly onto a street caused little worry, in the Ireland of 1922 with a civil war raging it building was simply too insecure to be used as a modern day parliament building. While the House of Commons entrance was surrounded by railings, it offered only minimal parking space and minimal security from attack, and practically no means of escape in the event of an attack. In contrast Leinster House was located well in from the streets that surrounded it, had considerable parking potential and was far more secure in the event of an anti-treaty republican attack on the Free State Dáil and Seanad.

As a result, the Free State initially hired Leinster House from its then owner, the Royal Dublin Society in 1922, before buying it in 1924. Longer term plans either to convert the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham into a national parliament, or to build a new parliament house, all fell through, leaving Leinster House as the accidential permanent modern Irish parliament house.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Dáil choses a different home", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki