Former members have included a number of notable Irish men and women, from republican revolutionaries Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet,[10] and Henry Grattan,[11] writers Bram Stoker,[1] Oscar Wilde,[1] and Samuel Beckett,[1] to founding father of the Northern Irish state Edward Carson[12] and first President of Ireland Douglas Hyde,[13] and – in more recent times – Government Ministers like Mary Harney[1] (who was the first female auditor of the society) and Brian Lenihan, and modern Irish authors, such as Sally Rooney[1] and Naoise Dolan.

It was a time of great change in Ireland and the Western world, at the height of the Enlightenment and before the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.

In 1782, Lawrence Parsons was elected as an MP for Dublin University at 24, having served as auditor of the Hist just the previous year.

Theobald Wolfe Tone, later leader of the United Irishmen, was elected auditor in 1785, and Thomas Addis Emmet was a member of the committee.

In 1812 the provost, Dr Thomas Elrington, objected vehemently to the question ‘Was Brutus justifiable in putting Julius Caesar to death?’.

In 1843, under auditor William Connor Magee, future Archbishop of York,[22] the society re-formed within the college after a student petition, again on the condition that no subject of current politics was debated.

[citation needed] The society continued successfully after that with many lively debates, including the motion on June 10, 1857 ‘That the Reform Bill of Lord Grey was not framed in accordance with the wants of the country’, proposed by Isaac Butt and opposed by Edward Gibson.

[23] In 1864 the society collected money from its members to erect statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith at the Front Gate of the college.

The college board relaxed its rules, allowing such motions as ‘That the Gaelic League is deserving of the support of every Irishman’ in 1905 and 1906.

[citation needed] Politicians such as David Ervine, Jeffrey Donaldson and John Hume have spoken in debates on Northern Ireland.

[citation needed] In 2005, the then Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell unveiled proposals for reform of the legal profession at a society debate on the matter.

As early as 1932 James Auchmuty and Garrett Gill travelled to Moorhead to speak at Minnesota State University.

[citation needed] It also plays a role in providing Secondary School Level Debating, for which the librarian of the society is primarily responsible.