ABSTRACT
The Irish Home Rule Convention was held in Regent House, Trinity College Dublin, from 25 July 1917 to 5 April 1918. It was formed to enable Irish political parties, Unionist and Nationalist, to reach agreement over the status of Irish government before the end of the First World War. The British administration was faced with an enormous task of reconstruction after the end of a conflict whose outcome was still uncertain. Imperial reorganisation was complicated by the suspension of an increasingly outmoded 1914 Government of Ireland Act on the statute books. The Irish Parliamentary Party, architects of this earlier settlement, no longer represented the full range of Irish Nationalist opinion after the Easter Rising; proof of this was Eamon de Valera's election for Sinn Féin at East Clare in June 1917. To enjoy any claim to legitimacy, delegates to the Irish Convention had to be selected from outside the traditional consensus. Accordingly, fifteen places were reserved for delegates with specific economic, political and social skills. 1
