Episode 2 - Panel 1a - The Irish Senate, 1922 - 1928 - Dr. Elaine Byrne

Southern Irish Loyalism in Context

This paper argues that the Irish Senate of 1922–28 is a rare case of a non-partisan chamber in a bicameral system which effectively occupied the role traditionally assigned to the opposition within a unicameral parliamentary system. In some respects it was the de-facto opposition. In many ways, particularly in those early years, it was a model second chamber. The reasons for this atypical role are in themselves unusual. The quality of the Senate’s membership, the rules underpinning its establishment and the ways in which Senators exercised those rules may have enabled it to be particularly persuasive in amending legislation. The willingness of the new government to keep those with Unionist sympathies within the fold as part of the State building exercise was particularly important. The inaugural 1922 Senate was constituted by two separate nomination procedures, each with an exceptionally narrow franchise. W. T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive (1922-32) directly appointed thirty individuals. His nominees numbered sixteen former Southern Unionists, including ‘seven peers, a dowager countess, five baronets and knights, literary, professional and business men.’ This deliberate appointment process to the Senate warranted the consolidation of the Anglo-Irish and Unionist traditions to the Irish Free State. Aside from engineering the political and symbolic reconciliation of the ancien regime with the new Free State, the Upper House had the significant purpose of bringing political and administrative expertise into the legislature, noticeably absent within Dáil membership. Consideration is given to why the Senate came to exert the influence it did by exploring the practical realities of parliamentary representation in the new state. Finally, the contribution of the Senate is analysed with particular reference to its involvement in wholesale structural judicial reform which remains the basis for the judicial system through the Courts of Justice Act 1924. Dr Elaine Byrne is the author of A Crooked Harp: Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010 (Manchester University Press, 2012). She has held academic appointments at the University of Limerick, Trinity College Dublin and the University of New South Wales. Elaine is a columnist with the Sunday Business Post and will be called to the Bar in 2017.