Acceso usuarios
James Kelly
Between 1692 and 1800, 485 private bills and heads of private bills were initiated in Ireland, of which 313 (or 65%) received the royal assent. Initially, most private bills were admitted to the political process through the medium of the Irish privy council, but once the house of commons had asserted its primacy as the place of origin of Irish law, private bills increasingly took their rise as heads of private bills at that forum, in accordance with the requirements of Poynings' Law. While this meant that private bills were subject to the same close scrutiny that was accorded public bills at both the English/British and Irish privy councils, the fact that such bills sought to modify family settlements obliged both Houses of the Irish parliament and both councils to establish particular procedures that are at once revealing of the operation of these bodies, of the procedural innovations required to make private legislation, and of the privileged position it gave to the elite who could appeal to parliament. Indeed, though the manner in which private legislation was made changed with legislative independence, private bills continued to be authorised by the Irish parliament until the Act of Union.
