National University of Ireland

National University of Ireland founded 1908 to provide higher education for Irish Roman Catholics. It consists of three colleges: University College, Galway; University College, Cork; and University College, Dublin (not to be confused with the Univ. of Dublin; see Dublin, Univ. of ). The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and St. Patrick's College in Maynooth, a Roman Catholic seminary, are affiliated with the university.

National University of Ireland, successor to the Royal University, and the British government's final attempt to solve the university question. Ignoring schemes proposed by the Robertson (1903) and Fry (1907) commissions, the Irish Universities Act (1908) dissolved the Royal University and established the Queen's University of Belfast and the National University of Ireland, the latter a federal body comprising University College, Cork, University College, Galway, and a reconstituted University College, Dublin. (Maynooth became a ‘recognized’ college in 1913.) Religious tests and the use of funds for theological chairs were prohibited, but the act stipulated that the composition of the senate and the governing bodies of the constituent colleges should be acceptable to the members of the predominant denomination in each institution.

Kenneth Milne