Like the modern Oireachtas, the Free State legislature was dominated by the directly elected Dáil.

Unlike the modern body, the Free State Oireachtas had authority to amend the constitution as it saw fit, without recourse to a referendum.

This parliament governed the English-dominated part of Ireland, which at first was limited to Dublin and surrounding cities, but later grew to include the entire island.

[1] Throughout the 19th century Irish opposition to the Union was strong, occasionally erupting in violent insurrection.

This was an extra-legal, unicameral parliament established by Irish republicans, known simply as Dáil Éireann and thus existed outside of British law.

Once the Constitution of the Irish Free State was in effect the Third Dáil served as the lower house of the Oireachtas.

It was designed to legislate for Southern Ireland,[3] a political entity which was created by the British Government to solve the issue of rising Irish nationalism and the issue of partitionism, whilst retaining Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.

Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State membership of the Dáil was open to all citizens who had reached the age of twenty-one.

The Dáil was elected on the basis of universal adult suffrage by "proportional representation" and the single transferable vote.

As adopted, the constitution required that term of a Dáil would last for four years, unless the law specified a shorter period or the house was dissolved early.

The following general elections took place to the Free State Dáil during its existence: The Constitution of the Irish Free State provided that the President of the Executive Council would be appointed by the King "on the nomination of" the Dáil and that the Executive Council as a whole had to resign en bloc if it lost the confidence of the lower house.

A constitutional amendment passed in 1936 removed the role of the King entirely and provided that, in the final months of the Free State, the President would be elected by the Dáil directly, rather than merely being 'nominated' by the lower house.

With the passage of the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 the British Government lost the right to formally advise the King in relation to the Irish Free State and so the possibility of the Governor-General taking any action without the approval of the other institutions of government was a remote possibility.

Unlike its modern successor, the Dáil did not have authority to declare war, this power being reserved for the Oireachtas as a whole.

During the later days of the Irish Free State the Dáil, as the dominant component of the Oireachtas, had the effective authority to amend the constitution in any way it chose.

Seanad Éireann ("Senate of Ireland") was the upper house of the Oireachtas of the Irish Free State from 1922 until 1936.

However, to get the house started, the body's initial membership would be appointed by Dáil and the President of the Executive Council.

8) Act, passed on 25 October 1928, reduced the minimum age of eligibility for Seanad members to 30 and the Constitution (Amendment No.

This was not the custom during the Irish Free State because the Seanad was elected in stages and therefore considered to be in permanent session.

The New York Times remarked that the first Seanad was "representative of all classes", though it has also been described as, "the most curious political grouping in the history of the Irish state".

[8] Members included William Butler Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty and General Sir Bryan Mahon.

The 76 candidates were then put to the public electorate on 17 September 1925, but without partisan campaigning, turnout was less than a quarter of the 1,345,000 potential voters.

As adopted the Constitution of the Irish Free State contained a number of provisions for direct democracy, which included a special role for the Seanad.

Most importantly it was provided that the Seanad could, if three-fifths of its members agreed, demand a binding referendum on any bill.

Before it was removed, the Seanad's right to demand a referendum was contained in Article 47, which provided for voters to veto legislation directly in certain circumstances.

Under the current constitution, a simple majority of senators (with the agreement of one-third of the Dáil) can request that the President of Ireland refer a bill to the people.

The President can thus refuse to sign it until it has been approved either in an ordinary referendum or by the Dáil after it has reassembled after a general election.

Éamon de Valera had seen its delay of his proposals as illegitimate; the continuing opposition majority had stemmed from a combination of his earlier boycott of the Free State Oireachtas and the provision for the Seanad's self-election.

The abolition was highly controversial at the time and the last chairman Thomas Westropp Bennett played a key role.

However, from 1927 onwards he technically reigned in the Irish Free State on a separate throne as "King of Ireland".