Page "Irish Houses of Parliament" Paragraph 38

Ultimately the old Irish Houses of Parliament, the world's first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building, has remained a curiously contradictory symbol for Ireland: a parliament based on discrimination and exclusion that nevertheless, through producing radical leaders like Henry Grattan, is seen generally with affection by a people whose ancestors were debarred from membership.

A parliament that, though Protestant establishment in membership and loyal to the Crown, in 1782 produced the first real attempt at Irish independence, achieving the ' Constitution of 1782 ' that stressed its loyalty to the King by virtue of his Irish, not British Crown.