The last years of Dublin Castle : the administration of Ireland 1890-1921

Abstract

The most significant thing about the finding of the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in 1916 that the Irish administrative structure was 'anomalous in quiet times and almost unworkable in times of crisis' was the equanimity with which it was greeted. The defectiveness of the existing structure was widely recognised. There was less agreement about the causes of that defectiveness or how they might be remedied. The main feature which distinguished the administration of Ireland from that of the rest of the United Kingdom was the existence of a separate Irish Executive. It was a barrier to closer union and sometimes promoted greater diversity. The Executive's functions were complex and varied, probably too much so. The respective powers of its main officers were poorly defined and proved a constant source of friction. These weaknesses were exacerbated by the weakness of the permanent civil service in Ireland. Partly because of the absence of an effective contripetal force in Dublin Castle, the Irish boards and departments and the Treasury in London assumed an added importance. The Irish boards were numerous, their functions were poorly defined and often overlapped, and their operations were, in many cases, uncontrolled. This was guaranteed to infuriate the Treasury which managed to exercise a crippling control in some areas of Irish administration. The Treasury waged a prolonged campaign to limit Irish expenditure but was unsuccessful on this front because the exigencies of politics, more than anything else, shaped Irish administrative policy. This was a two-way process. If political exigencies shaped administrative policy, the administrative structure was an equally important factor in the shaping of Irish politics. That is an obvious point but one which has largely been ignored by Irish historians. With a few exceptions, they have been too preoccupied with the cut and thrust of political history to recognise how much is to be learned from the study of the theory and practice of Irish administration. The underlying theme of this thesis is the extent to which the history of the period 1890-1921 - the last years of Dublin Castle - was shaped by the machinery of government.