Links for legislation and parliament

Bibliographies
Irish History Online and the Royal Historical Society Bibliography should be consulted for publications on the history of Irish legislation.

Biographical information about members of parliament
Summary information on all members of the Irish house of commons between 1692 and 1800 is available free (and more detailed biographies for a fee) at the History of the Irish Parliament.

Some members of the Irish houses of commons and lords have entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Most university libraries and some public libraries subscribe to the online edition (click here for a list). The Dictionary of Irish Biography, to be published in print and online in 2009, will contain many entries for members of the Irish parliament.

Online source material
Printed source material relating to the Irish parliament and legislation is available in the following subscriber services: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO); Early English Books Online (EEBO); and The Making of the Modern World. Further material will be found in British History Online (some of whose collections are free and others subject to a small subscription). Irish legislation is frequently mentioned in Calendars of State Papers for the reigns of William and Mary (1689–1702) and Anne (1702–1704) and in Calendars of Home Office Papers (1760–1775).

Before 1800 some public legislation of the English (after 1707 British) parliament affected Ireland. In addition private acts were often passed in England at the instance of petitioners resident in Ireland. From 1801 public and private acts for Ireland were of course passed by the parliament of the United Kingdom. Online British parliamentary collections contain much Irish material.

Many measures enacted for the benefit of Irish petitioners are listed in the Chronological Table of Private and Personal Acts (1539–2006), compiled by the Office of Public Sector Information.

English (after 1707 British and after 1801 United Kingdom) parliamentary papers are available online through the projects of British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service (BOPCRIS): 18th Century Official Parliamentary Publications Portal 1688–1834 (available in British and Irish universities); Enhanced Parliamentary Papers on Ireland 1801–1922 (EPPI); and Ford Selections of British Parliamentary Papers 1801–1995.

The Parliamentary Archives has an online catalogue of its holdings and a guide to Digitised Historical Parliamentary Material, with many further links.