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Former building housing the Parliament of Ireland

Parliament House (Tithe na Parlaiminte) in Dublin, Ireland, was home to the Parliament of Ireland, and since 1803 has housed the Bank of Ireland. It was the world's first purpose built bicameral parliament house. It is located at College Green.

Originally it was the site of Chichester House, which was built in the early 17th century by Sir Arthur Chichester. This building was adapted for use by the Irish Parliament in the 1670s, and was demolished to make way for a new parliamentary building. Chichester House was flanked by rows of narrow houses known as Dutch Billies, which were demolished and replaced during the Wide Streets Commission. Construction started in 1729. The building was home to the two Houses of Parliament, serving as the seat of both chambers (the Lords and Commons) of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland for most of the 18th century until that parliament was abolished by the Act of Union of 1800, when Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The current parliament building is Leinster House.

In the 17th century, parliament settled at Chichester House, a townhouse in Hoggen Green (later College Green) formerly owned by Sir George Carew, Lord President of Munster and Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, which had been built on the site of a nunnery disbanded by King Henry VIII at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. Carew's house, named Chichester House after its later owner Sir Arthur Chichester, was a building of sufficient importance to have become the temporary home of the Kingdom of Ireland's law courts during the Michaelmas law term in 1605. Most famously, the legal documentation facilitating the Plantation of Ulster had been signed there on 16 November 1612. Chichester House was in a dilapidated state, allegedly haunted and unfit for official use. In 1727 parliament voted to spend £6,000 on a new building on the site. It was to be the world's first purpose built two chamber parliament building. The then ancient Palace of Westminster, the seat of the English (before 1707) and, later, British Parliament, was a converted building; the House of Commons's odd seating arrangements were due to the chamber's previous existence as a chapel. Hence MPs faced each other from former pews. The design of this building, one of two purpose built Irish parliamentary buildings (along with Parliament Buildings, Stormont), was entrusted to an architect, Edward Lovett Pearce, who was a member of parliament and a protégé of the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Conolly of Castletown House. During construction, Parliament moved into the Blue Coat Hospital on Dublin's Northside. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 3February 1729 by Thomas Wyndham, 1st Baron Wyndham, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Pearce's design was revolutionary. The building was effectively semi circular in shape, occupying nearly 6,000 m2 (1.5 acres). Unlike Chichester House, which was set far back from Hoggen Green, the new building opened directly onto the Green. The principal entrance consisted of a colonnade of Ionic columns extending around three sides of the entrance quadrangle, forming a letter E (see picture below). Three statues, representing Hibernia (the Latin name for Ireland), Fidelity and Commerce (later carved by Edward Smyth) stood above the portico. Over the main entrance, the royal coat of arms was cut in stone. The building underwent extensions by architect James Gandon, as Pearce had died. Gandon was responsible for three of Dublin's finest buildings, the Custom House, the Four Courts and the King's Inns. Between 1785 and 1789 he added a new peers' entrance at the east of the building, facing onto Westmoreland Street. Unlike the main entrance to the south, which came to be known as the House of Commons entrance, the new peers' entrance used six Corinthian columns, at the request of peers who wished their entrance to be distinct from the Ionic columns of the main entrance. Over this, three statues by Edward Smyth were placed, representing Fortitude, Justice and Liberty. A curved wall joined the Pearce entrance to Gandon's extension. This masked the uneven joins of some of the extension, as shown below. The wall, built of granite with inset alcoves, bears little resemblance to the building as it was in its parliamentary days. Another extension was added on the west side into Foster Place, designed in 1787 by architect Robert Parke; while matching Gandon's portico, he tried a different solution, linking the other portico to the main Pearce one by a set of Ionic pillars. The result proved unattractive. When the Bank of Ireland took over the building, it created an architectural unity by replacing this set of Ionic columns by a curved wall similar to Gandon's east wall. Ionic columns were then added to both curved walls, giving the extensions an architectural and visual unity that had been lacking and producing the building's ultimate exterior. The interior contained one unusual and highly symbolic feature. While in many converted parliamentary buildings where both houses met in the same building, the houses were given equality or indeed the upper house was given a more prominent location within the building, in the new Irish Houses of Parliament the House of Commons was featured, with its octagonal parliamentary chamber located in the building's centre. The smaller House of Lords was given a lesser position nearby. The original, domed House of Commons chamber was destroyed by fire in the 1790s, and a less elaborate new chamber, without a dome, was rebuilt in the same location and opened in 1796, four years before the Parliament's ultimate abolition.

Pearce's designs came to be studied and copied both at home and abroad. The Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle imitated his top lit corridors. The British Museum in Bloomsbury in London copied his colonnaded main entrance. His impact reached Washington, D. C., where Pearce's building, and in particular his octagonal House of Commons chamber, was studied as plans were made for the United States Capitol building. While the shape of the chamber was not replicated, some of its decorative motifs were, with the ceiling structure in the Old Senate Chamber and old House of Representatives chamber (now the Statuary Hall) bearing a striking resemblance to Pearce's ceiling in the House of Commons. The uniqueness of the building, the quality of its workmanship and its central location in College Green, across from Trinity College Dublin, made it one of Dublin's most highly regarded structures.

Much of the public ceremonies mirrored those of the British Houses of Parliament. Sessions were formally opened by a Speech from the Throne by the Lord Lieutenant, who "used to sit, surrounded by more splendour than His Majesty on the throne of England". The Sovereign's official representative, when he sat on the Throne, sat beneath a canopy of crimson velvet. As in the English and British parliaments, the House of Lords was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, who sat on the Woolsack, a large seat stuffed with wool, which was seen as a symbol of economic success and wealth. At the State Opening of Parliament, Members were summoned from the nearby House of Commons chamber by White Rod, (as opposed to Black Rod in Westminster). In the Commons, business was presided over by the Speaker, who in the absence of a government chosen from and answerable to the Commons was the dominant parliamentary figure. Speaker Conolly remains today one of the most widely known figures ever to be produced by an Irish parliament, for his role in Parliament and for the wealth that allowed him to build one of Ireland's greatest Georgian houses, Castletown House. Sessions of parliament drew many of the wealthiest of Ireland's Anglo Irish Ascendancy to Dublin, particularly as sessions often coincided with the Irish Social Season, running from January to 17 March (St. Patrick's Day), when the Lord Lieutenant presided in state over state balls and drawing rooms in the Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle. Leading peers flocked to Dublin, where they lived in enormous and richly decorated townhouses, initially on the Northside of Dublin, later in new Georgian residences around Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. Their presence in Dublin, along with large numbers of servants, provided a regular boost to the city's economy. The abolition of Parliament in 1800 had a major economic impact. Within a decade, many of the finest mansions (including Leinster House, Powerscourt House, and Aldborough House) had been sold, often to government agencies. Though Parliament itself was based on the exclusion of the vast Irish Catholic majority in Ireland, many nationalist historians and writers blamed the absence of Parliament for Dublin's increased impoverishment, with many of the large mansions in areas like Henrietta Street sold to property developers and landlords who reduced them to tenements. The draw of the Viceregal Court and its social season was no longer enough to encourage most Irish peers and their entourages to come to Dublin. Their absence, with all their collective spending, severely damaged the Dublin economy, which went into dramatic decline. By the 1830s and 1840s, nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell was leading demand for the Repeal of the Act of Union and the re establishment of an Irish parliament in Dublin, only this time one to which Catholics could be elected, in contrast with the earlier Anglican only assembly.

In the last thirty years of the Irish parliament, a series of crises and reforms changed its role. In 1782, following agitation by major parliamentary figures, but most notably Henry Grattan, the severe restrictions such as Poynings' Law that effectively controlled the Irish Parliament's ability to control its own legislative agenda were removed, producing what was known as the Constitution of 1782. A little over a decade later, Roman Catholics, who were by far the demographic majority, were allowed to cast votes in elections to Parliament, though they were still barred from office. The crisis over the "madness" of King George III produced a major strain in Anglo Irish relations, as the King's parliaments possessed the theoretical right to nominate a regent without the requirement that they choose the same person. However, they in fact chose The Prince of Wales, who served as The Prince Regent in both the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. The British Government decided the entire relationship between Britain and Ireland should be changed, with the merger of both kingdoms and their parliaments. After one failed attempt, this finally was achieved, albeit with mass bribery of members of both Houses, who were awarded British and United Kingdom peerages and other "encouragements". In August 1800 Parliament held its last session in the Irish Houses of Parliament. On 1January 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland and its Parliament officially ceased to exist, with the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland coming into being, with a united parliament meeting in Westminster, to which Ireland sent approximately 100 members, while peers in the Peerage of Ireland had the constant right to elect a number of fellow Irish peers as Irish representative peers to represent Ireland in the House of Lords, on the model already introduced for Scottish peers.

Initially, the former Parliament House was used for a variety of purposes, including as a military garrison and as an art gallery. In 1803 the fledgling Bank of Ireland bought the building from the British Government for £40,000 for use as its headquarters. Both suggestions were rejected by the bank. TD Kevin Humphreys in 2012 also called for the bank to return the building to the state.