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The Constitution of 1782 is a collective term given to a series of legal changes which freed the Parliament of Ireland, a medieval parliamentary institution consisting of the Irish House of Commons and the Irish House of Lords, of legal restrictions that had been imposed by successive Norman, English, and later, British governments on its the scope of it's juristiction. These restrictions had, in effect, allowed the Irish executive of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to control the parliamentary agenda and to restrict its ability to legislate solely in the best interest of the people of Ireland rather than the objectives of the monarchy of the three kingdoms.
The most punitive restriction arose in Poynings' Law of 1494. These restrictions were lifted in 1782, producing a period of novel legislative freedom. This period came to be known as Grattan's Parliament after Henry Grattan, a major campaigner for reform in the House of Commons. Through the Act of Union 1800, the Irish Parliament merged with the Parliament of Great Britain in 1801, ending the period of legislative freedom. From 1801 to 1922, Ireland was a constituent part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and was legislated from the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster.
The eighteenth century Old Irish Parliament House is located in College Green in Dublin. It was the first purpose-built two-chamber parliament, pre-dating the nineteenth century Palace of Westminster and the United States Capitol). It survives today in use as headquaters of the Bank of Ireland, College Green. While the chamber of the Irish House of Commons was dismantled after the Act of Union, the chamber of the Irish House of Lords still exists in it's orignal Georgian design.
See also
| Major constitutional laws affecting Ireland | |
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| Pre-Union |
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| UK Acts |
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| Constitutions |
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| Oireachtas Acts |
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| Treaties |
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