Irish honours system

Ireland has no formal honours system. Proposals to introduce one have been made by various groups at different times. The Order of St. Patrick, established by the British monarchy in the Kingdom of Ireland in 1783, has been in abeyance for decades. The Constitution mandates that "Titles of nobility shall not be conferred by the State."

Irish republicans were opposed to the British honours system from both Irish nationalist antipathy to its Britishness and republican opposition to its monarchist underpinnings. The Act of Union 1800's passage through the Parliament of Ireland was, notoriously, helped by the offer to legislators of British and Irish peerages and other honours; the 1783 introduction of the Order of St. Patrick was a similar source of patronage and compliance.

Article 5 of the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State read:

The original draft prepared for the Provisional Government had stated more baldly, "No title of honour may be conferred by the State on any citizen of Saorstát Éireann", but the British insisted on adding the exception in order to preserve a theoretical royal prerogative. In addition to a ban on new titles, the drafting committee had envisaged a phasing out of existing peerage titles, but the Provisional Government removed that to conciliate southern unionists such as Lord Midleton. In the debate on the Article 5 in the Third Dáil/Provisional Parliament,Darrell Figgis proposed an absolute prohibition, alluding to the contemporary scandal surrounding the sale of British peerages.Kevin O'Higgins countered:

...
Wikipedia