Dublin Castle administration

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The Upper Courtyard of Dublin Castle. The Viceregal apartments are on the left.

Dublin Castle was the centre of the government of Ireland under English and
later British rule. "Dublin Castle" is used metonymically to describe British rule in
Ireland. The Castle held only the executive branch of government and the Privy
Council of Ireland, both appointed by the British government. The Castle did not hold
the judicial branch, which was centred on the Four Courts, or the legislature, which
met at College Green till the Act of Union 1800 and thereafter at Westminster.

Contents

• 1Head
• 2Other officers
• 3Civil service
• 4See also
• 5Sources

Head[edit]
The head of the administration was variously known as the Justicar, the Lord Deputy,
from the seventeenth century the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and later the Viceroy.
Before 1707 he represented the government of the Kingdom of England, then that of
the Kingdom of Great Britain, and finally from 1801 that of the United Kingdom. He
was also the personal representative in Ireland of the monarch.
By the nineteenth century, the Lord Lieutenant was declining in importance by
comparison with his chief aide, the Chief Secretary for Ireland. By the late nineteenth
century the Lord Lieutenant was sometimes, but not always, a member of the British
cabinet, but the Chief Secretary invariably was a member.
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 gave the Lord Lieutenant a new role, that of the
Crown's representative in the two new Irish UK regions of Northern
Ireland and Southern Ireland. However, the Irish War of Independence and
subsequent Civil War meant that Southern Ireland's institutions never came into
operation and Northern Ireland's institutions were not established until 1921. Upon
the independence of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom in 1922, the Lord
Lieutenancy was abolished, with its functions being transferred to the two new offices
of Governor-General of the Irish Free State and Governor of Northern
Ireland respectively.

Other officers[edit]
Other major officers in the Dublin Castle administration included the Chief Secretary
for Ireland, the Under-Secretary, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, the Attorney-General
for Ireland (briefly replaced under the Government of Ireland Act by the Attorney-
General for Southern Ireland), and the Solicitor-General for Ireland. All of these posts
were abolished in 1922. The Chief Secretary's office evolved into the administrative
basis for the new President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State,
effectively the prime minister, with the Under Secretary's administrative role
becoming that of the new chief civil servant in the Irish Government, the Secretary to
the Executive Council.

Civil service[edit]
Just as the British civil service ("Her Majesty's Home Civil Service") evolved from the
officials of the various government departments around Whitehall in London, so the
corresponding officials in Dublin evolved into the Irish civil service. The Irish Office in
London[citation needed] was the part of the British civil service which liaised with Dublin
Castle, just as the Colonial Office liaised with colonial governments. After
the Partition of Ireland, most Irish civil servants transferred to either the Civil Service
of the Irish Free State or the Civil Service of Northern Ireland. Those based in the
Free State who were unsympathetic to the new regime were allowed to retire early on
reduced pension.

See also[edit]
• Dublin Gazette

Sources[edit]
• Costello, Peter (1999). Dublin Castle in the life of the Irish nation. Dublin: Wolfhound
Press. ISBN 0-86327-610-5.
• McBride, Lawrence W. (1991). The Greening of Dublin Castle: the transformation of
bureaucratic and judicial personnel in Ireland, 1892-1922. Catholic University of America
Press. ISBN 9780813207155.
• McCarthy, Denis; Benton, David (2004). Dublin Castle: at the heart of Irish History.
Dublin: Stationery Office. ISBN 9780755719754.
• McDowell, Robert Brendan (1976-12-01). The Irish administration, 1801-1914.
Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780837185613.
• Maguire, Martin (2008). The Civil Service and the Revolution in Ireland 1912-38: 'Shaking
the Blood-stained Hand of Mr Collins' (PDF). Manchester University Press. ISBN 978 0
7190 7740 1. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
• Morris, Maurice O'Connor (1889). Dublin Castle. Harrison.
• Smyth, Constantine J. (1839). Chronicle of the law officers of Ireland . London: Henry
Butterworth.
 • Sturgis, Mark; Coogan, Tim Pat (1999). Hopkinson, Michael (ed.). The last days of Dublin
Castle: the Mark Sturgis diaries. Irish Academic Press. ISBN 9780716526261.

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Dublin Castle administration in Ireland

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Kingdom of Ireland

Categories:

• Early Modern Ireland

• History of Ireland (1801–1923)
• Government of Ireland
• Government of the Kingdom of Great Britain
• Government of the United Kingdom
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• This page was last edited on 4 July 2020, at 01:27 (UTC).

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