THE OLD HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT in Dublin are probably at the top of my list of favourite buildings in the entire world. Now the headquarters of the Bank of Ireland, it has a long and varied history, and its exterior composition is one of surprising unity for a structure the components of which were designed by three architects. It is supposedly the first purpose-built parliament building in the world, and stands on the site of Chichester House, a stately home adapted for use by the Irish Parliament from the 1600s onwards.

The location, with a history dating back centuries, is just south of the Liffey river upon what was then known as Hoggen Green. A nunnery existed on the site which was supressed during Henry VII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. A large private house was then built on the site, set back from the street, eventually known as Chichester House. (It likely incorporated some of the old convent’s structure). Among the esteemed inhabitants of the house were Sir George Carew, sometime Lord President of Munster, Sir Arthur Chichester, after whom the house was named, and the Anglican Bishop Edward Parry is known to have had a lease on the place during his lifetime.

The building must have been seen as holding some public significance, not only because it was located adjacent to the University of Dublin (of which Trinity College is the sole constituent institution), but it was home to the Irish Law Courts for a time beginning with the Michaelmas legal term of 1605. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, no later than October 1692, the Irish parliament began to meet at Chichester House on College Green.

The first recorded meeting of the Parliament of Ireland was in 1264, making it ostensibly older than the English Parliament if one counts from de Montfort’s Parliament of 1265. (More reasonably, we might count the Oxford Parliament of 1258 as England’s “first”). Admittedly, the Parliament was born out of the extended Anglo-Norman domination of Ireland, and Poynings’ Law of 1494 meant that all acts had to receive approval from England before becoming law. Alongside the Protestant Revolution in England, Protestantism was made the state religion in Ireland. Nonetheless, Irish Catholics were actually allowed to vote for the Irish House of Commons (though not stand for election) and take seats in the Irish House of Lords until they were explicitly banished in 1728.

With growing confidence as an institution, the Parliament of Ireland in 1727 voted to tear down Chichester House and construct what is probably the first purposely-built parliament building in the world. They commissioned one of their own number, Edward Lovett Pearce MP, well known as the leading proponent of Palladian architecture in Ireland. Parliament repaired to the Blue Coat School north of the Liffey while the foundation stone of the new structure was laid on February 3, 1729.

As the eighteenth century proceeded, the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who dominated the Irish Parliament began to seek greater freedom from the British Parliament in Westminster. Through the efforts of the great reformer Henry Grattan, the Parliament of Great Britain was persuaded to allow the repeal of Poynings’ Law in order to appease the growing Irish discontent. With the “Constitution of 1782”, as it was known, Ireland’s legislative independence was restored.

Henry Grattan, towards the right, in the red uniform, addressing parliament.

“I found Ireland on her knees,” Grattan proclaimed. “I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!”

Ireland’s gentry and aristocracy in the Commons and the Lords used their newfound freedom from Britain to adopt a program of moderate, evolutionary reform with the aim of stabilizing the divided nation. Most importantly, by the actions of this Protestant elite the freedom of the Catholic Church was gradually extended. Catholics were once again allowed to vote for the Commons from 1793. In 1795, George III, King of Ireland, exhibited his munificence towards his loyal Roman Catholic subjects by establishing St. Patrick’s College at Maynooth as a Catholic seminary. The land for the college donated by the (Protestant) Duke of Leinster. The seminary continued to be funded by the officially Protestant government until 1869, when the (Anglican) Church of Ireland was disestablished, removing Protestantism as the official state religion.

The façade and dome of Pearce’s original structure.

Pearce’s creation was fronted by an E-shaped Ionic collonade and portico facing what by then became known as College Green. What is somewhat odd, perhaps even off-kilter, about Pearce’s plan is the prominence it gives to the House of Commons, presumably at the expense of the House of Lords. The Commons chamber was on a direct axis with the front entrance while the Lords were pushed off the axis towards the east. This may have reflected the fact that Pearce was himself a member of the Commons, but it is also probable that William Connolly, the powerful Speaker of the House as well as Pearce’s political mentor, played a part in this seemingly inappropriate architectural distinction.

This inbalance is in contrast to the later Houses of Parliament at Westminster designed by Pugin and Barry, in which the Commons and the Lords are given virtually equal distinction in terms of the plan. Somewhat ironically, Pugin’s parliament, which has no real main façade, was designed somewhat to look as if it was constructed at different time periods (albeit with the external style all the same), though in reality except for Westminster Hall and some basements and crypts the entire structure was completed by a single architectural duo working at one time. The Irish Parliament building, meanwhile, was constructed by three architects at three different times (though all within the same century) yet has been made to appear as if composed as a whole.

The plan of the building, with the walls of Pearce’s original structure shown in bold, the later additions lighter.

The House of Commons chamber was the centrepiece of the interior. It was octagonal, with the debating chamber divided from the visitors’ gallery by a collonade. Students from neighboring Trinity College were afforded the right of entry to the gallery if wearing their academic gowns, though the privilege was repealed in 1795 by Speaker Foster.

A painting of the Irish House of Commons assembled in 1780.

Though not short of classical white ornamentation, the Commons chamber retained green for the walls and other decoration and furniture, as the complementary red was used for Lords chamber. Thus began the precedent of daughter parliaments in the Empire and Commonwealth adopting the lower house green and upper house red typical in parliamentary design. (Though it should be noted that the Irish parliament was not a daughter parliament to Westminster, as it was of independent origin).

Alas, the magnificent chamber burned in 1792 and was rebuilt to a different plan in 1796, just a few years before the Act of Union.

An incorrect colourisation of a print of the last meeting of the Irish Parliament.

On a side note, a Cusack once held the office of Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, though Sir Thomas Cusack (previously a Justice and afterwards Master of the Rolls) was elected to the position in 1541, long before the body occupied Chichester House and its procedent. (Sir Thomas was shamefully deeply involved in implementing Henry’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in Ireland).

The Lords chamber for the Peerage of Ireland, like the Commons chamber, featured a coffered ceiling though, unlike the lower house, the ceiling was arched rather than domed. The chamber featured a raised dais in a recessed alcove on one end upon which sat the viceregal throne. The flanking walls of the House of Lords featured, above fireplaces, two tapestries by John van Beaver depicting William III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne.

The Parliament House was joined on College Green by the West Front of Trinity College, constructed between 1752 and 1759. The construction of the West Front as well as the Dining Hall, Chapel, and othe structures behind it were lavishly funded by the Parliament. The result was that Trinity College in Dublin had buildings grander than any Oxford or Cambridge college of the day.

Like other prominent Dublin buildings of the age, Parliament House featured statuary by the sculptor Edward Smyth. At the summit of the façade’s central pediment was Hibernia, the allegorical personification of Ireland using the country’s Latin name. Hibernia was joined at the western base of the pediment by Fidelity, with Commerce completing the triumvirate on the eastern base.

The Lords desired an extension of their wing providing for a more suitable and exclusive entrance portico, and they commissioned noted Dublin architect James Gandon to design the eastern extension in 1785. Another extension, designed by Robert Parke in 1787, was added on the west side with a complementary portico built on a somewhat smaller scale.

The building, however, was not quite complete until the great sweeping curved walls which lend so much drama to the august building’s exterior were added. Gandon had built a curved plain curtain wall to cover up the awkwardness of how his extension met Pearce’s original building. Parke linked his structure’s frontage to Pearce’s by means of an ionic collonade. The result was generally deemed unattractive, and so both Parke’s collonade and Gandon’s plain curtain wall were replaced with matching curtain walls featuring Ionic columns with intervening niches.

This aerial photo shows the haphazard nature of the building’s interior plan, masked by the curved curtain walls flanking the main façade.

With the Parliament’s freedom, Dublin once again became a city of great importance instead of a mere administrative backwater. Merchants and the aristocracy built grand houses in and around the city to participate in the social season. Between January and St. Patrick’s Day in March, the Viceroy of Ireland presided over state balls in the Viceregal Apartments of Dublin Castle, coinciding (for the most part) with the parliamentary session.

Ireland’s golden age, however, was not to last long. Alongside the process of Ireland regaining legislative independence, the horrors of the Revolution were regnant across the sea in France, and the revolutionary regime there attempted to export its evil ideology. In 1798, the Society of the United Irishmen, a radicalized band of angry reformers, launched a violent republican revolution inspired by the French. The rebellion was eventually suppressed but its widespread nature spread alarm at the state of affairs in Ireland. In the backlash, the British government was convinced that the only solution was the union of Great Britain and Ireland, along similar lines as the Union of Scotland and England in 1707. The initial attempt to get the Irish parliament to abolish itself and agree to union with Great Britain failed, but after a massive campaign of bribery and inducements, the Act of Union was passed in 1800. On January 1, 1801, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland joined, and the United Kingdom was born.

The old Houses of Parliament were sold to the Bank of Ireland, on the sole condition that it not be used for political purposes. Accordingly, the House of Commons was demolished and replaced with a banking hall.

The Lords chamber, however, escaped harm by being assigned a new use as the Bank of Ireland’s boardroom. The above photograph was taken during this usage.

Two hundred years the building is still in the hands of the Bank of Ireland. The House of Lords chamber is open to the public during normal business hours. Inside the mostly-restored chamber is the woolsack on which the Lord Chancellor of Ireland once sat, as well as the mace of the Irish House of Commons, unused by today’s Dail Éireann, thanks to the republican reluctance to recall Ireland’s monarchic past.

The Bank of Ireland is a fine building and it’s Ireland’s loss that it no longer houses the nation’s parliament. Some would say that it’s Ireland’s loss that it is no longer part of the United Kingdom, but in reality both countries have reached such low ebbs in the history of parliamentary government that it’s hard to justify that. Perhaps with a tinge of irony, the Oireachtas na hÉireann (Ireland’s current parliament) sits in Leinster House, itself built as a home for the Duke of Leinster – a member of Ireland’s House of Lords.

WHEN BRITAIN FINALLY granted dominion status to Ireland, her longest-held possession, in the 1920s it unfortunately also signalled the end to a long tradition of Irish service in H.M. Forces. Well, this is not entirely true — thousands of Irishmen from both Ulster and the Republic continue to volunteer for the Army, Royal Navy, and RAF (the Royal Irish Regiment and the Irish Guards receiving the lion’s share) with an exemplary record of service to the Crown. But numerous other regiments with long lineages rolled up their colours in a dramatic ceremony at Windsor Castle in 1922. (An aside: one of those five regiments was the Connaught Rangers whose former name — the 88th Regiment of Foot — inspired the later re-designation of a New York Guard unit as the 88th Brigade NYG, of which yours truly is a veteran and my uncle the former commander).

The forces which became the Irish Free State Army, given their irregular nature, lacked a ceremonial tradition (though, had I been around and Michael Collins invited me to do so, I would’ve happily manned the desk in the IRA Office of Protocol, Ceremony, and Feathery Hats). In 1932, Dublin hosted the International Eucharistic Congress — a big event in those days, sadly reduced in stature — which meant that dignitaries of great importance would take this opportunity to visit the Irish capital.

And so, the Mounted Escort was formed in 1932 to escort the Papal Legate during the Eucharistic Congress, but given the colour and cut of their uniforms, they quickly acquired the nickname of ‘the Blue Hussars’. Originally, the artist Seán Keating headed up a committee to design a uniform in a suitably modern-but-Celtic style, as was the general artistic bent of the Irish state at the time. Keating’s design called for a saffron léine tunic with six rows of black braid, black cuffs, a blue brat cloak, pantaloons, and a black Balmoral bonnet with saffron feather.

The Army decided not to go with Keating’s proposal but instead adopted the uniform of the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars: blue tunic & breeches, yellow frogging & lace, and black sealskin busby with yellow-orange plume. The only difference was that the 8th used dark blue, while the Blue Hussars went for a sapphire blue. Rumour at the time was that when the unit was being formed, a bunch of 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars uniforms were discovered in a closet in Dublin Castle and it was decided to use them, but record actually exists of the purchase of seventy uniforms for the Mounted Escorts.

Ireland adopted a new constitution that introduced a presidency and reduced the role of the King of Ireland to the very barest essentials of the head of state: signing the letters of credence accrediting Irish ambassadors to foreign states, and signing international treaties on Ireland’s behalf. Almost all other duties that a head of state might have were transferred to a new President who fulfilled the internal role while the King maintained the external role. (Furthermore, the ‘Irish Free State’ was abolished and ‘Éire’ was born). Professor Douglas Hyde, the Protestant founder of Conradh na Gaeilge, was selected as the first President of Ireland and inaugurated at Dublin Castle in June, 1938. From that time, the Blue Hussars became the Mounted Escort to the President of Ireland.

When President Hyde retired in 1945, he was succeeded by Seán T. O’Kelly, who was escorted to his inauguration in an open landau through the streets of Dublin. In 1947, the government of Taoiseach Éamon de Valera (boo! hiss!) abandoned the use of carriages by the President after a carriage accident at the Dublin Horse Show (whose official patron, incidentally, was still H.M. the King of Ireland). The following year, under the Inter-Party Government, the Blue Hussars were abolished altogether, as it was decided to shift to motorcycles under the ridiculous excuse from the Ministry of Defence that they would be more impressive than horses. It was also widely used as an excuse that there was a lack of suitable horses — in Ireland! And so, after the Republic of Ireland was proclaimed in 1949, the heads of state of Great Britain and France continued to enjoy escorts of Irish horses while Ireland made do with foreign-built motorcycles.

2 Cavalry Squadron, the Army motorcycle unit which now escorts the President of Ireland, has inherited the nickname of the Blue Hussars, and in 1997 received blue motorcycles in a nod towards the tradition. It seems shameful though — especially considering that the Irish Army School of Equitation continues to train international-quality horsemen — that the Blue Hussars have not been revived.

On Upper Merrion Street at the end of Fitzwilliam Lane in Dublin sits a thoroughly Edwardian pile which has been given the thoroughly boring title of ‘Government Buildings’. The city ceased to be a legislative capital in 1800 when the Irish Parliament voted to abolish itself and join the United Kingdom, so government edifices constructed during the nineteenth century lacked the proud stateliness of the Grattan era. The Westminster parliament finally conceded the principle of Irish home rule in 1914 but disastrously suspended its implementation due to the First World War. In stepped the Irish Volunteers, Easter 1916, the IRB, and all that and by the time the Treaty of Versailles ended the conflict on the continent, Britain was up to her neck in troubles in Ireland. Events had intervened and the unimplemented concession of home rule proved insufficient to quell the dire situation.

Even so, the Government of Ireland Act 1920 partitioned the island and created a separate government for ‘Southern Ireland’ and ‘Northern Ireland’, each with its own devolved legislature. The old Irish Parliament House had been sold to the Bank of Ireland so there was a question as to where the two houses of the new Southern Irish body would convene. Eventually the government decided upon this building, the Royal College of Science, and it was commandeered for that purpose.

The Royal College of Science was the last significant public building of the British era in Dublin’s history. Edward VII laid the foundation stone in 1904 and was opened by George V in 1911. Sir Aston Webb, a capable but far from excellent architect best known for the current façade of Buckingham Palace, designed the complex on the site of a row of Georgian townhouses that were demolished one-by-one as the structure was sequentially completed.

Interestingly, the original plans included a full façade on Merrion Street (above), whereas the final execution (below) features a gap allowing the central dome to be viewed from the street and Fitzwilliam Lane. Neither design is entirely satisfactory. One imagines the composition would have been more successful had the Merrion Street side been left open as a large forecourt rather than partially enclosed as a demi-courtyard. Space in central Dublin was at a premium, however, and the Royal College of Science wanted to make as much use of their site as they could.

After the Irish Free State was created, the Dáil Éireann chose to meet in the Royal Dublin Society’s lecture hall, part of the Leinster House complex adjacent to the Royal College of Science. While various proposals were made on where to site permanently Ireland’s new parliament, the TDs & Senators got comfortable at Leinster House and the government purchased the building from the RDS. Encumbered as Leinster House is by the National Library and the National Museum on either side, the government expanded into the Royal College of Science building. The RCS was subsumed into University College Dublin in 1926 but the engineering faculties remained on Merrion Street in what was know increasingly known as ‘Government Buildings, Dublin’.

From 1921 onwards, the government gradually took over more and more of the complex until finally in 1989 the engineers were kicked out. Charlie Haughey happened to be Taoiseach of Ireland at the time and commissioned a wholesale renovation of the structure to finally complete the transformation from technical institute to center of administration. He even had a heliport put on the roof, but (to Haughey’s disappointment) the Air Corps pilots had a devil of a time landing on it and it eventually fell into disuse. The high public expenditure on the project at a time of relative economic hardship in Ireland was controversial, and some took to nicknaming the Taoiseach’s pet project ‘the Chaz Mahal’. The renovation did, however, win the Silver Medal for Conservation awarded by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.

THOUGH THE BORING brains of tawdry metropolitan Londoners are all too quick at relegating Dublin to the provincial periphery of the mind, the Irish capital is a perpetual treasure trove for the old-fashioned and right-minded. A number of items of interests have recently been sold at the auction houses of the fair city, including two ceremonial uniforms (above) of that famous Dubliner, Sir Edward Carson QC. Carson was the lawyer and statesmen who passionately, but without bigotry, opposed the cause of Irish home rule. He was the defending barrister in the Archer-Shee case and led the Marquess of Queensberry’s team in Oscar Wilde’s doomed libel action. Carson and Wilde had been at Trinity together (where — little known fact! — Carson was a keen hurler), and the famous wit quipped of Carson “I trust he will conduct his cross-examination with all the added bitterness of an old friend.”

Having a fine mind for the law and being politically active meant that Carson moved through several layers of British government, holding numerous offices and positions. He was a Privy Counsellor twice over (of both Ireland and the United Kingdom), a Queen’s Counsel, served in the House of Commons as leader of the Irish Unionists, and held portfolios in the British Cabinet. The two ceremonial uniforms auctioned at Whyte’s of Molesworth Street are from his appointment as Solicitor General for England & Wales in 1900. (He had been Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1892, and was later Attorney General for England & Wales, in which position he was succeeded by the F.E. Smith of Chesterton’s famous poem).

The two black wool morning coats feature gold bullion trimming and buttons, and are sold with a pair of trousers with gold filigree stripe matching the lesser uniform, and knee breeches & silk stockings for the greater uniform. The vellum appointment as Solicitor General was also included, in a red leather box with a gilt impression of the royal arms. Whyte’s estimated a sale of €50,000-€70,000, but the lot’s realised price was €42,000.

The Ulster-born painter Robert Hunter was one of the most prolific portraitist of late eighteenth-century Dublin, arguably the city’s (and country’s) golden age. Among his many works are these portraits of the three brothers King. Sir Robert King, 4th Baronet (left) was notorious as “a vile young rake” with vast estates in Roscommon, whose only interests were drinking, wenching, and spending. He once seduced the sixteen-year-old daughter of a tenant (who tried to force a marriage at pistol-point), fought in at least one duel, lived with his mistress in Dublin, was a Member of the Irish Parliament (before being made 1st Baron Kingsborough), and was Grand Master of the Irish Freemasons.

Hunter depicts the rake at three-quarter length, standing in a red coat with an embroidered waistcoat and sword, holding a tricorn hat. His brother Edward (5th Baronet after Robert’s death in 1755, made Baron 1764, Viscount 1766, and Earl 1768) is depicted with dog by his side and gun in hand. The third brother, Henry King (later the Rt. Hon. Colonel Henry King MP), Hunter shows in a red velvet coat and yellow waistcoat, again with a sporting dog by his side. All three portraits are 48 inches by 38½ inches in giltwood rococo frames from the period. Sir Robert King sold at James Adam & Co., St. Stephen’s Green, for €55,000, Sir Edward for €50,000, and Henry King for €38,000.

Garret Morphy (c. 1655-1715) is probably best known for his portrait of St. Oliver Plunkett, the most familiar image of that saint who is a Cusack kinsman and whose relics are enshrined at Downside Abbey in Somerset. Little is known about Morphy’s early training, but he moved back and forth between London and Dublin from the 1670s until settling permanently in the Irish capital in the mid-1690s. A Catholic himself, he painted portraits for many of the dwindling numbers of Catholic aristocracy and gentry whose final death knell was sounded by the Williamite victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

This portrait, depicting a black-clad woman holding a rosary, is attributed to Morphy and has traditionally been known to the King family as “Margaret O’Cahan” (oil on canvas, 69 in. x 35 in.). The fontage cap worn by the subject was widespread in 17th-century France, notably at the exiled court of James II, and survived in fashion no later than 1710. Prof. Anne Crookshank (of Trinity College Dublin) doubts it is actually a Morphy, citing its continental canvas, but Morphy probably did travel to France. As the catalogue entry notes, “Prof. Crookshank feels that this portrait is quite possibly of Florence O’Cahan, Margaret’s mother, and as such is a rare depiction of a member of the old Irish aristocracy in exile.”

Whether Florence or Margaret, the rather haunting and sad portrait was sold for €27,000 at Adam & Co’s October auction at Slane Castle.

The “Green Ensign” never had any official sanction as the banner of Irish shipping, but evidence suggests it was used by some maritime merchants of the Emerald Isle from the seventeenth into the nineteenth centuries. In 1872, the Viceroy of Ireland, in reply to an Admiralty inquiry, clarified the use of the Green Ensign as incorrect, and attached a supportive essay by Sir J. Barnard-Burke, Ulster King of Arms (Ireland’s heraldic chief) expounding upon the tradition of blue as Ireland’s national colour. The gold-harp-on-blue remains in the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland and also forms the Presidential Standard of the Republic of Ireland.

This nineteenth-century Green Ensign (heavy cotton, 49 in. x 104 in.) is a rare surviving example of the flag, many of which were confiscated and destroyed by customs and Admiralty officials. Estimated to fetch no more than €500, competing vexillolophiles pushed the final sale price to €800 at Whyte’s in November.

In it’s long history, the address of No. 82 Eaton Square in London has housed a Major-General of the East Indian Cavalry, a Lord Strafford, a Lord Bagot, an Earl of Dalhousie, an Earl of Clare, a Duke of Bedford, and Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands — thankfully not all at once. It’s probably best know for its half-century as the Irish Club, a much-favoured drinking & smoking spot for the community of Gaels in London. The club was founded in 1947, with a number of pre-existing Irish clubs merging into it. George VI — grateful for the devoted service of the Irish who volunteered for his armed forces during the Second World War — heard that the club was in search of premises and asked the Duke of Westminster, one of the largest landowners in London, if he could help. The Duke provided the leasehold of No. 82 Eaton Square to the Irish Club for a nominal sum. (As it happens, the 4th Duke’s son served as a Unionist MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, and later in the Northern Irish Senate).

“In its heyday,” the Irish Times reports, “it was a London venue where a pint of Guinness at the bar could be supped with anyone from a building contractor to an aristocrat — as long as there was Irish blood flowing through their veins.” The late Lord Longford (father of the renowned historian Thomas Pakenham, now the 8th Earl) was President of the club until his death. Irishmen such as Garrett Fitzgerald & Conor Cruise O’Brien were frequently found at the bar, and it was popular with Irish journalists as well. Henry Kelly, the radio and television broadcaster, remembered the evening of one IRA bombing in London:

The Club began to find its Eaton Square home cumbersome, and in 2003 it sold up and moved to Tudor Street in Blackfriars. Now the building, designed by Thomas Cubitt, is being converted back into a single residence.

Founded in 1592, the University of Dublin is the youngest of the ancient universities of Britain. (It’s ten years younger than the next youngest, Edinburgh, and nearly five-hundred years younger than the oldest, Oxford). On Archiseek, an Irish internet forum dedicated to architecture, there is a user named ‘grahamh’ who posts, from time to time, photographs he has taken from around the fair city of Dublin, of which those presented here are a selection. The University of Dublin is much more commonly known as Trinity College, Dublin, as the university has just the one college, unlike the multi-collegiate universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere.

Ireland’s senate is a curious creature. Its first members were co-opted & appointed and these included seven peers, a dowager countess, and five baronets and knights, twenty-three Protestants, and a Jew. Among this cast of characters were W. B. Yeats, General Sir Bryan Mahon, and the physician-poet-author Oliver St. John Gogarty. In 1937, however, the Seanad Éireann took its current form, and since the abolition of the Bavarian upper house in 1999, the Seanad is (so far as my research can discover) the last corporately-organised parliamentary body in Europe.

There are sixty members of the Irish senate, who are chosen by a variety of means. Eleven are appointed by the serving Taoiseach (prime minister) to lessen the chances of a government that commands a majority in the Dáil (lower house) from not being able to pass legislation in the Seanad. Three are elected by the graduates of the University of Dublin (better known as Trinity College), and a further three by the graduates of the National University of Ireland (with its constituent colleges at Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Maynooth).

The Dublin University parliamentary constituency has been in existence since 1603. Until 1800 it was in the Irish House of Commons, then from 1801 to 1922 it was in the British House of Commons. From 1922 to 1937 it was in the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower house, but was transferred to the Seanad in 1938. The constituency has often elected persons of great historical interest, such as Sir Edward Carson, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, and Conor Cruise O’Brien.

The NUI constituency was only just introduced in 1918 with the reform of university constituencies in the British House of Commons. Like Dublin University, its representatives sat in the House of Commons, then the Dáil Éireann, and finally the Seanad Éireann.

In addition to the taoiseach’s appointments and the university representatives, forty-three senators are elected by a special electorate of TDs (members of the lower house), senators, and local councillors. The nominees for these forty-three seats are selected by five vocational panels: the Administrative Panel, representing government workers, social services, and the voluntary & non-profit sectors; the Agricultural Panel, representing farming and fishing; the Cultural & Educational Panel, representing arts, literature, culture, education, and the Irish language; the Industrial & Commercial Panel, representing industry and commerce, as well as engineering and architecture; and the Labour Panel, representing workers both organised into unions and independent from unions.

The idea was that the Dáil, the lower house, would represent the Irish people by being directly elected by the population, while the Seanad would represent the various distinct sectors of the population to give a particular voice to these constituencies. In practise, senators are often failed candidates for the Dáil whom the ruling party wants to include in the government. Intellectuals are always beating up on the senate, variously claiming that it should be made larger, made smaller, have its power cut, have its power increased, be directly elected, be abolished, or any variety of the above you might fancy. To democratise the Seanad would do nothing but introduce yet another house of professional politicians with entire careers funded by the hard-working Irish taxpayer.

The Seanad hasn’t hurt anyone, so why fiddle with it? It might be ineffective as an upper house, but Ireland hasn’t suffered hugely for it. It’s an interesting little thing, and those who want to either make it go away or make it more democratic are the bores of the world — the “monotony monitors” as my old Latin teacher called them — who travel the four corners of the globe seeking out remaining pockets of individuality and interesting-ness to be standardised into boredom or else abolished.

While I am Fine Gael by tribe & temperament, there’s no doubting the party’s been heading in the wrong direction for several decades now. Once moderate in the face of republican extremism, it is now a banal shell of its former self. (Who would Gen. Mulcahy vote for today, one wonders). I hope those who have the opportunity of voting in the current European elections might consider voting for Mr. Ganley’s Libertas party, which is running candidates in quite a number of EU member states, including the United Kingdom.

Another view of Dublin’s splendid General Post Office on O’Connell Street; the last one we posted was from half a century earlier.

Persuant to our previous photograph of the Union Jack proudly snapping from Dublin’s General Post Office, one of our dear friends & loyal readers, a former editor of Trinity College’s newspaper, sends this photo of the 1919 Victory Parade through the streets of Dublin after the end of the Great War. The red, white, and blue here flies from the top of Trinity College, and the view looks down D’Olier Street (if I recall correctly) towards O’Connell Street in the distance. The classical portico on the left marks the entrance to the Irish House of Lords.

It is worth remembering that a great deal more Irish served in the forces of the Crown than in any republican armed forces or groups. The memory of Ireland’s great sacrifice during the First World War was shamefully neglected from the 1930s until about ten or fifteen years ago. It was a pity that the famous old Irish regiments were disbanded when independence came in 1921, rather than being continued under a native Irish command. Gone the Connaught Rangers and Dublin Fusiliers, and all the great battle honours won by Irishmen from Waterloo to far off India. (Two Irish regiments still exist in the British Army, the Royal Irish and the Irish Guards). Still, in remembrance of the dead of the First World War, one can visit the War Memorial Gardens by the banks of the Liffey, beautifully designed by Lutyens and completed after independence. The cost was split between the Irish and British governments, and, in the post-war downturn, half the workers were Irish veterans of the British Army and half were veterans of the formerly rebel forces.

Ireland remained neutral during the Second World War but declared a state of emergency, which is why the time of the war is often known in Ireland as “the Emergency”. Allied and Axis soldiers who washed up or crash-landed in Ireland found themselves interned in camps, but the Irish soldiers guarding them were only armed with blank ammunition. (Allied internees were often allowed to escape). The law of the day forbade any Irish citizen from joining a foreign military, but many soldiers of the Irish Army, policemen of an Garda Siochana, and many Irish civilians left for Britain to join the Allies in the fight, and were not punished on their return. When the port of Belfast suffered a German bombardment, fire brigades from Dundalk to Dublin were sent north irrespective of the border in order to help quell the flames.

Returning to Trinity, flying the Union Jack in 1919 would not have proved controversial in the slightest (after all, it was still the official flag of the land), but the crowds gathered again on College Green in 1945 to spontaneously celebrate the news of Germany’s surrender. The flag of Ireland with those of all the Allied nations were flown from the flagpole of Trinity, but some tactless student had placed the Union Jack at the top and the Irish Tricolour at the very bottom, below even the Soviet hammer-and-sickle. The crowd noticed this and began to howl, but some more thoughtful Trinity man swiftly took the colours down and raised them again with the Tricolour to the fore. The joyful spirit resumed.

Rooms with a view

OLD TRINITY by Peter Henry
I SPOTTED this remarkable photograph in the recently-published Our War: Ireland and the Great War, edited by John Horne and published by the Royal Irish Academy. The image shows men and women watching, from the roofs of Trinity College, a victory parade on Westmoreland Street. The parade, which took place on July 19, 1919, celebrated success in the Great War.

Perhaps there was no rule against accessing roofs in 1919, or an exception may have been made for the parade. But the modern DU Calendar is unequivocal: these days, “College roofs and attic spaces are out of bounds.”

The spectacle we see in this photograph may never be repeated, but regulations are occasionally ignored. Before the renovation of rooms in Parliament Square in 2006, several attic doors were unlocked, giving easy access to the roofs. In 2005, following a day’s drinking in College Park, I was lucky enough to be able to watch the St Patrick’s weekend fi reworks sitting at the chimneys of number ten. The following year, a companion and I had a close escape from the porters when we were spotted boozing on the roof of number eight during Trinity Ball.

I would certainly not support allowing crowds of people unrestricted access to roofs. (Look at the chap sitting on the ledge of number seven – not safe!) But this picture highlights the contrast between those more relaxed days and our era of health and safety gone mad. Risk is an element of day-to-day life, but some apparatchiks’ refusal to acknowledge this leads to closed-off balconies, an excess of security, and less fun for all.

THE UNION FLAG flies above number seven in this photograph. I wonder what flag flew above Regent House that day, if any? Trinity did not abandon the flying of the union jack in 1922. The college briefly considered flying a flag of the crowned harp, which appears on the university arms and on many sports clubs’ ties. But this idea was given up in favour of flying the tricolour on one side, the union flag on the other, with the college flag in the middle.

By the mid-1930s the flying of the union flag was considered provocative rather than anachronistic and it flew, officially, for the last time, half-staff, on the passing of King George V in 1936. Dubliners did not complain, but the Deputy Ulster King of Arms wrote to the college to point out the heraldic irregularity of the gesture.

When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, the union flag was seen again – this time as a result of student initiative. Some excited undergraduates gained access to the roof of Regent House and hoisted every flag they could get their hands on: among them the union jack, the Soviet flag, the tricolour and the stars and stripes. The union flag, for whatever reason, was above the flag of Ireland on the staff, and some members of an extremist political group, taking offence at this, burned a union flag on College Green. The students, probably for a laugh, burned an Irish fl ag above Regent House in response. Not unexpectedly, this led to anger on the streets, and it was a week before tensions in Dublin lifted.

Did Charles Haughey – a UCD student at the time – burn the union flag that day? An Irish Times obituary says so, as does Ian Wood’s Ireland During the Second World War. But McDowell and Webb do not make any mention of him.

DURING THE Students’ Union’s silly 2007 campaign to have the Irish tricolour flown over the college there was mention of flag protocol, but I have never encountered any in print. I have noticed that when a foreign dignitary visits Trinity, the flag of Ireland flies above Regent House, the flag of the visitor’s country above number seven, and the impressively-large flag of Trinity College above number four. On Commencements days, the flag of the University Senate flies above Regent House. On St Patrick’s Day, the flag of Ireland flies above Regent House. And when a fellow passes away, the flag of Trinity College flies half-staff above Regent House. But these are only observations: I do not know the specifics.
— PETER HENRY