Grattan's Parliament

1782 - 1800 — For eighteen years Ireland's Parliament won a measure of independence — a brief flowering of Irish self-government that the Act of Union would end.

In 1782, led by the eloquent Henry Grattan, the Irish Parliament in Dublin won legislative independence from Britain — the right to make its own laws without London's veto. This was the era of "Grattan's Parliament," and it left its mark on the city in the grand Georgian architecture of the time, not least the great Parliament House on College Green.

But it was a limited freedom: the Parliament represented only the Protestant landed class, the Catholic majority remained largely excluded, and real power still lay with the British-appointed executive in Dublin Castle. The hopes it raised — and the fears the 1798 Rebellion stirred — led Britain to abolish it altogether. In 1800 the Irish Parliament voted itself out of existence, and the Act of Union of 1801 merged Ireland directly into the United Kingdom.