ABSTRACT

In the years 1920–1921, Ireland had its first (short-lived) Senate under Home Rule (1914–1920). This chamber was the immediate predecessor of the independent Irish Free State Senate. The Senate of the independent Irish state lasted just fourteen years, from 1922 to 1936. It was established as the upper house of the Parliament of the newly founded Irish Free State after the enactment of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922. It was intended to represent Southern Ireland’s Protestant minority, especially its landed, business and intellectual elite, in a country where the lower house would inevitably be dominated by Catholic Irish nationalists. A secondary function was to provide expert guidance for the Parliament’s lower house, the Dáil, in enacting legislation, which it could delay or amend. In 1933, it was abolished by the nationalist Fianna Fáil (‘Soldiers of Destiny’) government under Eamon de Valera (1932–1948) as a result of its continual blocking of that government’s legislation. The Senate deployed its delaying powers against its own abolition but gave itself only a stay of execution of two and half years, until 1936, when it ceased to exist.