The High Court of Appeal for Ireland was short-lived, and only heard a handful of cases before being abolished under the Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act 1922.
Final appellate jurisdiction was transferred from the House of Lords to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - which was then abolished in 1933 by the Constitution (Amendment No.
During the first three decades of its existence, the reputation of the Court of Appeal was very high, probably higher than that of any other tribunal in Irish legal history.
Maurice Healy, writing in 1939, thought that the Court as it was constituted in the early 1900s "could compare with any college of justice in history".
[6] Unfortunately, when these men were gone, there was a problem in finding replacements of equal calibre, and from about 1916, after the death of Fitzgibbon (in 1909), and the retirement of Holmes (in 1913) and Palles (in 1916), the reputation of the Court declined.