According to Patrick Wyse Jackson, curator of the Geological Museum at Trinity College Dublin, the granite used in the central 'piazza' of the Parliament House may have come from the Baltyboys quarry close to Blessington, where contemporary documents show that one William Borrowdale was paid £6-16s-2d for 'mountain stone' on 24 December 1729.

"[3] It is known that granite quarrying had been taking place in west Wicklow since the early 1700s from several openings at Baltyboys, and "from 1740 in more significant volumes at Woodend and Threecastles nearby and then from Golden Hill".

[3] The Parliament House was built between 1729 and 1739, and is noteworthy for its decorations, which, unusually, were carved from granite as opposed to a more malleable stone.

Wyse Jackson notes that "they would have been difficult to produce, on account of the coarse texture of the rock, and so reflect the considerable skills of the stonemasons.

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.

Three statues, representing Hibernia (the Latin name for Ireland), Fidelity and Commerce (later carved by Edward Smyth) stood above the portico.

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.

Patrick Wyse Jackson, curator of the Geological Museum in Trinity College, assessed the building in 1993 and noted the following:[1] Pearce's designs came to be studied and copied both at home and abroad.

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.

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.

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.

All these things were part of the history of Dublin at that time, and they certainly provided a life, a movement, a colour, entirely unknown to-day.

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 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".

From the 1830s under Daniel O'Connell, generations of leaders campaigned for the creation of a new Irish parliament, convinced that the Act of Union had been a great mistake.

While O'Connell campaigned for full-scale repeal, leaders like Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell sought a more modest form of Home Rule within the United Kingdom, rather than an independent Irish state.

The rising eventually led to the partitioning of Ireland and the establishment of the Irish Free State, which was a British Dominion rather than a form of Home Rule.

They chose the Round Room of the Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin for their home.

(The Round Room had more royal connections than the old Parliament House; it had been built for the visit of King George IV in 1821.)

It is highly unlikely that the Bank of Ireland, then with a largely Unionist board (some of whom were directly descended from members of the former Irish Parliament), would have supplied the building for such use.

In 1921 the British Government created a House of Commons of Southern Ireland through the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (also known as the Fourth Home Rule Act), though only four MPs (all unionists) assembled for the State Opening of Parliament by the Lord Lieutenant, which was held in the Royal College of Science rather than the old Parliament House.

As a result, the Free State initially hired Leinster House from its then-owner, the Royal Dublin Society, in 1922, before buying it in 1924.

It was used as a symbol by generations of nationalist leaders from Daniel O'Connell to Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond in their own quest for Irish self-government.

In 2006, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, met with Bank of Ireland's chief executive and chair to propose the building for an electronic library.

[15] RTÉ Radio 1 interviewed a number of stonecutters working at a height on the bank, who were using granite sourced from the Barnacullia quarries on the slopes of Three Rock Mountain, Dublin.

[15]: 40:30  Concurrent to being a stonecutter, Roe was also a teacher of stone carving at the National College of Art and Design at the time.

[15]: 40:30  The episode also filmed workmen setting a replacement facing wall of granite blocks at the building, and Ballyknockan stoneworker George Flynn grouting the base of an ionic column.