Irish Parliament Quotes

Repeal and Repeal alone is and must be the grand basis for all future operations, hit or miss, win or lose. The people will take nothing short of that …. I say there can be no other basis for association [of Ireland with Britain] save the Repeal, the glorious Repeal

Enda Kenny has the full support of the Fine Gael parliamentary party.

That the Kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom with a parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof, that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind the nation but the king, lords, and commons of Ireland, nor any Parliament which hath any authority or power or any sort whatever in this country, save only the Parliament of Ireland, to assure his Majesty that we humbly conceive that in this right the very essence of our liberty exists, a right which we, on the part of the people of Ireland do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yield but with our lives

Well, we know that eighteen years after that solemn declaration it was disregarded, and the Irish Parliament, which lasted for five hundred years, was destroyed by the Act of Union. Gentlemen, the Act of Union was carried by force and fraud, by treachery and falsehood.

Sinn Fein is the fastest growing party on the island of Ireland.

The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at a crossroads.

I intend to serve a full term as Taoiseach.

I think everyone acknowledges Teddy is the person in the Senate who speaks for Ireland.

In 1889, I predict, the legislative stage of the Irish question will have arrived; and the union with England, which shall then have cursed Ireland for nine tenths of a century, will be repealed.

Irish Protestants as a whole liked self-government for Ireland when government was placed exclusively in Protestant hands, as was the case under the Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century. But the increasing pressure of the partially enfranchised Catholic majority frightened their leaders into accepting the Act of Union, and in the nineteenth century Irish Protestants learnt to accept the Union as the one possible guarantee against Catholic ascendancy in Ireland.