1884 in Ireland

Events from the year 1884 in Ireland.

Events

"Dublin Castle scandal" – following a failed libel action, a number of members of the Dublin Castle administration are convicted of participating in male homosexual acts.
22 September – is wrecked on Tory Island, County Donegal, with the loss of 52 lives and only 6 survivors.
October – Ballymena, Cushendall and Red Bay Railway taken over by Belfast and Northern Counties Railway.
22 October – Isabella Mulvany is one of 9 women to get the first degrees from a university in Great Britain or Ireland, and the first in Ireland. Her degree is granted by the Royal University of Ireland.
1 November – Mew Island Lighthouse first illuminated.
6 December – Representation of the People Act extends the franchise uniformly across the U.K. to all male tenants paying a £10 rental or occupying land to that value, and restricts multiple voting; this increases the Irish electorate from 126,000 to 738,000.

18 February – English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins takes up a post as professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin on St Stephen's Green, where he will remain until his death in 1889 and write his "terrible sonnets".
1 October – first free public libraries in Dublin open.

Michael Cusack, Maurice Davin and other Gaelic games enthusiasts meet to establish the Gaelic Athletic Association on Saturday, November 1, 1884, in Hayes' Hotel, Thurles, County Tipperary.
The following goals are set out:

To foster and promote the native Irish pastimes.
To open athletics to all social classes.
To aid in the establishment of hurling and football clubs and organise inter-county matches.

17 February – Amby Power, Clare hurler.
20 March – Tomás Mac Curtain, Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork.
21 March – Nora Barnacle, lover, companion, inspiration and wife of James Joyce.
12 June – James Somers, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1915 at Gallipoli, Turkey.
17 June – Patrick Little, Fianna Fáil TD and Cabinet Minister.
23 June – Val Harris, soccer player and manager.
4 July – Mabel McConnell Fitzgerald, republican, suffragette and socialist.
14 September – Frederick Alfred Pile, soldier and politician.
4 November – Harry Ferguson, early aviator and developer of the modern agricultural tractor.
7 November – Patrick Belton, Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal TD, President of the anti-communist Irish Christian Front.
16 December – J. M. Kerrigan, actor.
17 December – Stanislaus Joyce, scholar and writer, brother of James Joyce.
;Full date unknown
:*Dick Doyle, Kilkenny hurler.
:*Edward Richards-Orpen, furniture maker and independent member of Seanad Éireann.
:*Ernest George Trobridge, architect.
:*William J. Twaddell, Ulster Unionist Party MP.

27 February – Peter Paul McSwiney, politician two times Lord Mayor of Dublin, entrepreneur co-owner of the first Dublin's Department store in 1853, which became the Clerys.
1 April – James Travers, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1857 at Indore, India.
25 June – Philip Gore, 4th Earl of Arran, Anglo-Irish peer and diplomat.
28 June – John Sullivan, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1855 at Sebastopol, in the Crimea.
27 July – Eliza Lynch, mistress of Francisco Solano López, president of Paraguay.
17 October – Alexander Martin Sullivan, journalist, politician and lawyer.
;Full date unknown
:*Richard Fitzgerald, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1857 at Bolandshahr, India.