First Dáil

The First Dáil (Irish: An Chéad Dáil) was Dáil Éireann as it convened from 1919–1921. It was the first meeting of the unicameral parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic. In 1919 candidates who had been elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead established an independent legislature in Dublin called "Dáil Éireann" (English: Assembly of Ireland). The establishment of the First Dáil occurred on the same day as the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence. After elections in 1921 the First Dáil was succeeded by the Second Dáil of 1921–1922.

In 1918 Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and was represented in the British House of Commons by 105 MPs. From 1882–1918 most Irish MPs were members of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) who strove in several Home Rule Bills to achieve self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom through the constitutional movement for reform. This approach put the Third Home Rule Act 1914 on the statute book but the implementation of this legislation was temporarily postponed with the outbreak of World War I. In the meantime the more radical Sinn Féin party grew in strength.

Sinn Féin's founder, Arthur Griffith, believed that nationalists should emulate the means by which Hungarian nationalists had achieved partial independence from Austria. In 1867, led by Ferenc Deák, Hungarian representatives had boycotted the Imperial parliament in Vienna and unilaterally established their own legislature in Budapest. The Austrian government had eventually become reconciled to this new state of affairs which became the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Members of Sinn Féin also, however, supported achieving separation from Britain by means of an armed uprising if necessary.

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