DUNNE, Francis Plunket (1802-1874), of Brittas Castle, Clonaslee, Queen’s co. of Dunsoghly Castle, co. Dublin

Descended from the ancient Irish family of O’Duinn, Dunne was born in Dublin, the eldest of five sons of Edward Dunne, a senior British army officer and resident landowner at Brittas, Queen’s County.Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland (1852), i. 363. General Dunne distinguished himself during the suppression of the 1798 rebellion, and served as deputy governor and high sheriff of Queen’s County. As commander of the Dublin garrison he had played a major role in putting down Robert Emmet’s rising in 1803: Gent. Mag. (1844), ii. 648; P.F. Meehan, Laois Yearbook (1983). Having been raised as a Protestant after his father’s death in 1771, Edward had sat briefly in the Irish parliament for Maryborough in 1800, when he voted for the Union. Sympathetic to Catholic emancipation, he unsuccessfully contested the county as a second string candidate in the Coote interest at the 1818 and 1820 general elections.E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), iv. 93; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 681; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 859. Francis’s mother was the sister of the 1^st earl of Bantry, and a niece of viscount Longueville.

Dunne took ‘high honours’ at Trinity College, Dublin, and was said to have received a first class certificate at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.The Handbook of the Court; the Peerage; and the House of Commons (1862), 272. His name does not, however, appear in the college’s admissions register. He enjoyed a successful military career,Morning Post, 19 Sept. 1840; Daily News, 12 Nov. 1851; Morning Chronicle, 26 June 1858; Hampshire Advertiser, 21 Oct. 1865. and, while a serving officer, nominated Sir Charles Coote for Queen’s County at the 1832 general election.E. O’Leary & M. Lalor, History of the Queen’s County (1914), ii. 686; Freeman’s Journal, 7 Nov. 1868. Dunne then spent two years with the Greek Boundary Commission, for which he was honoured by the Greek sovereign. Returning home in April 1836, he served for a time as a staff officer.Caledonian Mercury, 4 Apr. 1836; Morning Post, 20 May 1837; R.H. Mair, Debrett’s Illustrated House of Commons, and the Judicial Bench (1867), 68. He was presented to the king by General Sir John Lambert in June 1836: Morning Post, 16 June 1836.

While serving as high sheriff of his native county, Dunne was soundly defeated at Portarlington at the 1837 general election.Freeman’s Journal, 3 Feb. 1837. Standing as a ‘Ministerial candidate’, he was described as a Radical but firmly opposed the repeal of the Union.Morning Post, 20 July 1837; The Times, 8 Aug. 1837. His subsequent offer to come forward for the county came to nothing: The Times, 11 Apr. 1837. In 1839 he was posted to Dublin and the following year became an aide-de-camp to the viceroy, viscount Ebrington.Freeman’s Journal, 19 Apr. 1839; Morning Post, 7 Feb. 1840. In 1844 he succeeded to his father’s 10,000 acre estate and the Gaelic title of ‘The O’Duinn’, inheriting additional lands at Fuerty, county Roscommon and in county Dublin from his grandmother, Margaret Plunkett.P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 45; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1862), i. 404-5; J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 144. Prominent in local administration, he was appointed an ex officio poor law guardian in January 1840 and elected chairman of the Mountmellick union in 1845.O’Leary & Lalor, History of the Queen’s County, ii. 693, 694; The Times, 11 Mar. 1841. He joined the Reproductive Committee, which coordinated Irish famine relief, early in 1847.Daily News, 22 June 1847.

Though widely regarded as a Whig,He had joined the public opposition to Lord Stanley’s Irish registration bill in 1841: Freeman’s Journal, 16 Jan. 1841. Dunne was returned unopposed as an ‘Independent Conservative’ for Portarlington in 1847, his ‘furious championship of protection’ having secured the influence of the earl of Portarlington, and thus prompted the retirement of the sitting Peelite member.Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, 1847 (New Parliament), 161; The Times, 22 Apr. 1859. Having promised to pay ‘close attention to the interests of Ireland’, Dunne proved an industrious representative. He made hundreds of contributions to debate, speaking most frequently on questions of military expenditure and the protection of Irish commercial interests, and became ‘notorious’ as a ‘financier and statistician’.Freeman’s Journal, 8 July 1874. ‘Hansard 1803-2005’ puts the number of speeches at 321, but does not list those made in 1853-7 and 1859-65. In 1860 alone Dunne made 64 contributions to debate. He served on 25 select committees between 1851 and 1868, most of which related either to Ireland or to military organisation. He generally voted with the Conservatives, but was a ‘friend’ of Lord Palmerston and pursued Irish issues in a manner which frequently transcended party lines.Standard, 19 July 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 17 July, 11 Aug. 1847; Manchester Times, 26 June 1850.

In September 1847 Dunne attended the meeting of the cross-party Irish National Council, convened to discuss the famine crisis.Freeman’s Journal, 29 Sept. 1847. He voted for the Irish crime and outrage bill that December but, despite signing a declaration of loyalty to the crown from Irish MPs and peers in the wake of the Young Ireland rising in April 1848, he opposed the renewal of the Irish Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in 1849.Freeman’s Journal, 19 Apr. 1848, 12 Feb. 1849. He participated in 126 of the 219 divisions that year: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. He led efforts to protect Irish distillers in 1848 and opposed the repeal of the Navigation Acts. One of only 12 members to vote against the third reading of the Irish incumbered estates bill, 4 June 1849, he argued that the measure ‘violated every principle of law and justice’ and was tantamount to ‘confiscation’.Freeman’s Journal, 24 June, 21 July, 31 Aug., 8 Sept. 1848; Belfast News-letter, 27 Apr. 1849; Hansard, 4 June 1849, vol. 105, cc. 1094-5. Dunne was also a leading member of the cross-party Irish opposition to the ministry’s rate-in-aid proposals and worked hard to promote the construction of Irish railways.Freeman’s Journal, 10, 21, 24 Mar. 1849; Daily News, 10 Mar. 1849. In January 1850 he attended meetings at Portarlington and Dublin for the protection of ‘native industry’, where he argued that free trade worked to the detriment of Irish manufactures. He also criticised absentee Irish landlords who, he calculated, had drawn £200,000,000 out of the country over the previous 50 years.Freeman’s Journal, 7, 18 Jan. 1850; Lancaster Gazette, 12 Jan. 1850. Although present at the third reading of the Irish franchise bill in May 1850, he ‘purposely abstained from voting’.Freeman’s Journal, 13 May 1850. In the spring of 1851 he gave evidence to the select committee on army and ordnance expenditure and twice divided the house with successful motions against the abolition of Kilmainham Royal Hospital, enlisting the support of 54 Irish members, half of them Liberals.PP 1851 (564) vii. 735; Freeman’s Journal, 31 Mar. 1851, 8 Mar. 1853. He generally supported Lord John Russell’s ecclesiastical titles bill, voting for its first and third readings, 14 Feb. & 4 July 1851, opposing its postponement, 15 May, and supporting its extension to Ireland, 20 June.Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1859. That month, however, he challenged the prime minister over the apparent exclusion of Irish members from select committees, and succeeded in having himself and two other Irishmen added to the committee on Kaffir tribes.Hansard, 8 May 1851, cc. 732-40; Morning Post, 9 May 1851; PP 1851 (635) xiv. 1; Morning Post, 9 May 1851. In 1861 Dunne asked ministers whether they ‘really intended to repeal the Union by their constant refusal’ to appoint Irish members to committees, describing their conduct as ‘an insult to Ireland’. As a consequence he was quickly added to the committee on the public offices extension bill: Hansard, 19 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, c. 859; Freeman’s Journal, 22 Apr. 1861.

Dunne was a persistent critic of the Irish poor law. In 1848 he had moved successfully for a debate on the operation of the Irish poor law, gathering support from ‘an overwhelming majority of Irish members’, and in January 1850 argued for the ‘oppressive system’ to be entirely overhauled.Freeman’s Journal, 2, 4 Mar., 22 July 1848, 7 Jan. 1850. He believed that ‘the enormous and unnecessary expenditure of rates’ merely reproduced ‘the poverty it pretends to relieve’, and in February 1852 joined efforts to have the Irish Annuities Act modified so as to reduce taxation on Irish landowners and occupiers.Freeman’s Journal, 27 Jan. 1852. A supporter of the Parent Board of Irish Manufactures and Industry, he argued that workhouses should be self-supporting. He also raised the question of famine expenditure by calling for a return of all works undertaken by the Board of Works and drew attention to Ireland’s fiscal relations with Great Britain. This was an issue with which his name became ‘indissolubly associated’, as he identified the pressure of local taxation and financial regulations as the chief impediments to Irish economic development.Freeman’s Journal, 4 Feb. 1852; Hansard, 11 Feb. 1852, vol. 119, cc. 416-8; The Era, 29 Feb. 1852; T. Kennedy, A History of the Irish protest against over-taxation, from 1853 to 1897 (1897), 2. Having attended Lord Derby’s parliamentary dinner, 18 Feb., he voted against the Whigs over the conduct of the Irish administration, 19 Feb., and seconded the motion of ‘his friend’ Lord Palmerston on the militia bill which brought down Lord John Russell’s ministry, 20 Feb. 1852Freeman’s Journal, 28, 31 Jan., 9 Feb. 1852; Standard, 19 Feb. 1852; Belfast News-letter, 25 Feb. 1852. Dunne joined Palmerston as a teller in the division. He was shortly afterwards appointed clerk of ordnance by Lord Derby; his re-election was not contested, his address having ‘very judiciously’ avoided ‘all allusion to political principles’, though he insisted that Derby’s ministry was ‘at least entitled to a trial’ and claimed that the government was ‘well inclined to repair the effects’ of recent Whig policy towards Ireland.Freeman’s Journal, 27 Feb., 9 Mar. 1852; Daily News, 8 Mar. 1852; Morning Chronicle, 8 Mar. 1852. He opposed the second reading of William Sharman Crawford’s tenant-right bill in May 1852, and supported Joseph Napier’s Irish coercion bill, 15 June.Freeman’s Journal, 8 May, 16 July 1852. Dunne also voted against William Shee’s tenant-right bill, 7 Dec. 1852: Freeman’s Journal, 11 Dec. 1852 That year he also sat on the first of several select committees on the militia estimates and on the construction of kitchens and refreshment rooms for the new House of Commons.PP 1852 (444) v. 447; 1854-55 (446) vii. 477; PP 1856 (297) vii. 339; PP 1861 (461) xiii. 467; PP 1852-53 (138) xxxiv. 285; PP 1863 (448) vii. 447; PP 1866 (228) xi. 557; PP 1867 (351) viii. 537; PP 1867-68 (409) viii. 509.

Dunne was returned unopposed at the 1852 general election, and afterwards served on the inquiry into the mapping of Ireland.PP 1852-53 (921) xxxix. 393. On the issue of free trade, he opposed Charles Villiers’s triumphant motion, 26 Nov. 1852, and walked out of the division lobby on that of Palmerston.Freeman’s Journal, 1 Dec. 1852. It was said that Dunne had only accepted a government post on the condition that ‘as regards Protection, and questions relating to Ireland, he might vote as he pleased’. He opposed Gladstone’s budget in May 1853 and criticised the chancellor’s plan to equalise the taxation of Great Britain and Ireland.He supported Cecil Lawless’s amendment to exempt Ireland from income tax, but regarded it as tardy and therefore doomed to fail: Hansard, 5 May 1853, vol. 126, cc. 1171-3. On 23 May 1853 he denounced the introduction of income tax to Ireland as a violation of the Act of Union. He moved once more for a preliminary inquiry into ‘the fiscal and political relations of Great Britain and Ireland’, with the view of ascertaining whether Ireland was bearing ‘her fair share of the Imperial taxation’.Hansard, 23 May 1853, vol. 127, cc. 504-10; Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 46; Examiner, 28 May 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 24 May 1853. Although his motion was dismissed by the government as an ‘unreasonable attempt’ to delay the budget and was defeated by 61 to 194, Dunne returned to the issue in March and June 1854, and later led an unsuccessful and largely unappreciated campaign on the issue.Morning Chronicle, 24 May 1853; The Era, 29 May 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 26 May 1853, 27 Mar., 12 June 1854; Hansard, 24 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 1315-7; 12 June 1854, vol. 133, cc. 1387-8; Kennedy, History of the Irish protest against over-taxation, 2. For further details see ibid, 1-8.

Dunne voted for the repeal of advertising duty, 1 July 1853, and that was listed year among the fifty highest attending members, dividing 158 out of 257 times.Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. In February 1854 he was involved in discussions with the prime minister, Lord Aberdeen, over an increase in the Irish representation under a future reform bill.Freeman’s Journal, 25 Feb. 1854. The Irish delegation claimed an entitlement to 200 members. That year he served on the select committee on the Thames Marshes and introduced a bill to extend the rights enjoyed by the medical graduates of Oxford and Cambridge to those of Scottish and Irish universities.PP 1854 (378) xviii. 635; PP 1854 (212) iii. 541. He opposed the repeal of stamp duty, 26 Mar. 1855, and was said to have rendered ‘effective service’ to William Pollard-Urquhart’s committee on Irish loan fund societies, which ‘revealed an incredible number of frauds and robberies of such institutions’.PP 1854-55 (259) vii. 321; The Era, 2 Nov. 1856. That May he joined a deputation to the treasury concerning the repeal of malt duty, and signed a petition for the release of William Smith O’Brien.Freeman’s Journal, 5, 23 May 1855. In 1863 he sat on the select committee on the malt duty: PP 1863 (460) vii. 453.

A colonel of the Irish militia since 1846, Dunne had ‘much to say on military subjects’ and loomed ‘especially large on the discussion of the army estimates’.‘The House of Commons in 1857’, Gent. Mag. (1857) i. 27. He served on the select committee on small arms and the inquiry into Sandhurst Royal Military College in 1854-5.PP 1854 (236) xviii. 1; PP 1854-55 (317) xii. 311. He later served on the select committee on ordnance: PP 1863 (487) xi. 1; Daily News, 13 Mar. 1863. Having voted against the Aberdeen ministry over its conduct of the Crimean war in December 1854 and June 1855, he criticised the performance of the army commissariat, arguing in July that ‘there was an utter disorganisation in the military departments’.Freeman’s Journal, 20 Feb. 1855; Hansard, 31 July 1855, vol. 139, c. 1560. Notwithstanding ‘the secrecy which had prevailed respecting their management’, he added, ‘enough had leaked out to frighten all military men’: Morning Post, 1 Aug. 1855. In February 1856 he was lauded as the only man ‘sufficiently clear-sighted’ to call Palmerston’s attention to disadvantages imposed on the allies by the terms of their armistice with Russia and, adding his voice to calls from the ‘Administrative Reformers’ for immediate military re-organisation, presented a petition on behalf of the Land Transport Corps in July.Reynolds’s Newspaper, 10 Feb. 1856; Hansard, 5 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 223-4; Freeman’s Journal, 3 July 1856. He participated in 80 of the 198 divisions in 1856: J.P. Gassiot & J.A. Roebuck, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of parliament (1857), 30. Regarding domestic issues, he served on an inquiry into advances to Irish lunatic asylums in 1855, and introduced an abortive bill to improve their management in February 1857.PP 1854-55 (262) viii. 531; PP 1857 session 1 (17) i. 275. In June 1856 he opposed the Irish peace preservation bill, which he regarded as unnecessary, and voted against the budget, 23 Feb. 1857. Belfast News-letter, 16 June 1856. He subsequently revolted against Palmerston’s foreign policy and supported Richard Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.

Although Dunne was one of the ‘select circle of … political friends’ who had been entertained by Lord Derby in St. James’s in March 1856, he was still regarded as ‘a sound Whig’. He was defeated in 1857 at Portarlington after a personal disagreement with the patron, who transferred his support to his nephew, Captain Lionel Dawson Damer.Derby Mercury, 12 Mar. 1856; Morning Chronicle, 11 Mar. 1857; Daily News, 8 Apr. 1857. Although both Conservatives, the Irish liberal press found Dunne ‘preferable, because the more national’: Freeman’s Journal, 2 Apr. 1857. Regarded locally as ‘the most indefatigable and popular member from Ireland’, and ‘much respected in political circles’, it was anticipated that Dunne would stand for the county ‘solely upon his own merits’.Freeman’s Journal, 23 Feb., 16, 19 Mar. 1857; Morning Chronicle, 11 Mar. 1857, quoting Leinster Express; Morning Post, 3 Apr. 1857. Instead he offered to raise a new Irish regiment for service in IndiaDaily News, 6 Oct. 1857, quoting Leinster Express; Examiner, 24 Oct. 1857; Standard, 18 Feb. 1857. He helped to get the name of the 5th Dragoons (or ‘Green Horse’), who had been disbanded for disloyalty in 1799, restored to the Army List as the 5th Royal Irish Dragoons. His name was also mentioned as a possible colonel of the 18th Dragoons, inspector-general of the Irish Constabulary and commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police: Standard, 4 Feb. 1858; Morning Chronicle, 23 Mar. 1858, quoting Limerick Chronicle; Belfast News-letter, 22 Mar. 1858. and, having spoken out against the proposed abolition of the Irish viceroyalty in February 1858, was later that month appointed as private secretary and aide-de-camp to the new viceroy, Lord Eglington.Standard, 16 Feb., 1, 8 Mar. 1858.

In private life Dunne was said to have been ‘courteous, honourable, and upright’. It was claimed that there was nowhere in Ireland ‘a man so popular amongst all classes and parties’ as he was in Queen’s County, where he was returned unopposed in 1859 with the ‘entire support’ of the Conservative interest.Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1859; Morning Post, 8 Nov. 1858, 23 May 1859. It was later said to be ‘a general remark amongst the people, who differed from him at election times, “what a pity it is that he is a Conservative.”’: Ibid., 8 July 1874. Having had his ‘sterling honesty’ called into question over the votes he had given on the ecclesiastical titles bill in 1851,Dunne was attacked by The Times which claimed that he had publicly denied his support for the bill in spite of the evidence of his votes. Dunne explained to the House that his opposition to the bill was manifested by his support for David Urquhart’s amendment, which condemned the ministry’s handling of the measure, 9 May 1851, and claimed that he had been mistakenly identified as having voted for its third reading: The Times, 21 May, 22 June 1859; Hansard, 22 June 1859, cc. 443-4. he pledged to ‘postpone party considerations’ and work to ‘unite the efforts of the Irish members’ in order to ‘uphold the rights of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament’. As ‘a very Liberal-Conservative’ he became increasingly convinced that the ballot was necessary, but backed Derby’s ministry in the confidence vote which brought about its resignation, 10 June 1859.Belfast News-letter, 8 Apr. 1859; The Times, 21, 22 Apr. 1859; Freeman’s Journal, 22 Apr., 6, 11 May 1859; Examiner, 23 Apr. 1859; Caledonian Mercury, 11 May 1859; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 120. Dunne also attended a grand banquet given to the Conservative leaders on 16 July 1859: Morning Chronicle, 18 July 1859. Having chaired the select committee on contracts for public departments in 1857, Dunne next moved for an inquiry into the expenditure of the war office, and sat on Sir James Graham’s important select committee on military organisation in July 1859.PP 1856 (362) vii. 117; PP 1857 session 1 (93) ii. 623; PP 1857 session 2 (269) (269-I) xiii. 1; Morning Post, 13 June, 12 July 1859; Morning Chronicle, 22 June 1859; PP 1860 (441) (441-I) vii. 1, 793.

Dunne continued to defend Irish interests and resisted Richard Spooner’s personal plea to support his anti-Maynooth motion in July 1860.Freeman’s Journal, 26 July 1860. In 1861 he defended Irish local administration, arguing that ‘there was no fund administered so economically in the whole of the United Kingdom as that managed by the grand juries’. He insisted that Ireland ‘was not properly represented’ in the Commons and unsuccessfully claimed one of the appropriated seats of Sudbury or St. Albans for County Cork.Hansard, 8 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 1678-9; 10 June 1861, vol. 163, c. 853; Freeman’s Journal, 13 June 1861. He served on the inquiry into the Irish drainage bill and sat on Edward Cardwell’s select committee on Irish poor relief that summer, defending the status of Irish infirmaries in the debate on the resultant bill in March 1862.PP 1862 (297) xvi. 593; Freeman’s Journal, 1, 12, 15 June 1861, 26 Mar. 1862; PP 1861 (408) (408-I) x. 1, 647; Hansard, 24 Mar. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 1978-9. Having argued for adequate Irish representation on the committee to inquire into the Galway steam packet contract in 1859, he opposed the subsequent withdrawal of the government subsidy, and joined a national deputation to Palmerston on the subject in May 1862.Morning Post, 13 July 1859; PP 1860 (441) (441-I) vii. 1, 793; Hansard, 15 July 1859, vol. 154, c. 1361-2; 30 May 1861, vol. 163, cc. 344-5; Belfast News-letter, 15 May 1862.

During the 1860s Dunne continued to criticise Ireland’s fiscal relationship with Great Britain and raised the issue of Irish taxation again, 30 Mar. 1860. He questioned Ireland’s capacity to bear equal taxation with England but was countered by Gladstone, who asserted ‘that there was no real equality of rights and liberties without an equality of taxation’, and that any exemptions granted to Ireland would be ‘nothing more than the note of political depression and degradation’.Hansard, 30 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1661-5; Kennedy, History of the Irish protest against over-taxation, 10-11. In April 1862 Dunne described the treasury’s statement on Irish tax revenues as ‘perfectly delusive’ and accused Gladstone of treating the public accounts of Ireland ‘with that contempt which he usually bestowed on Irish subjects’.Hansard, 3 Apr. 1861, vol. 166, cc. 528-9. With economic distress once again prevalent in Ireland, he returned to the question in February 1863 when, in moving unsuccessfully for a select committee, 12 June, he claimed to have been ‘furnished with abundant evidence’ that Ireland was ‘taxed beyond her fair share of imperial burdens’.Freeman’s Journal, 12 Feb., 12, 16 June 1863; Hansard, 12 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 816-25. Dunne was not, as has been asserted, ‘refused an inquiry’. Having seen his motion delayed by the death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, he conceded that a committee appointed so late in the session could not produce ‘any very useful result’, and so declined to put his motion to a division: Kennedy, History of the Irish protest against over-taxation, 14-9; Hansard, 12 June 1863, vol. 171, c. 862. A subsequent attempt to have Dunne drafted on to the public accounts committee was successfully opposed by Gladstone, but the colonel persisted.Freeman’s Journal, 26 June 1863; Hansard, 23 June 1863, vol. 169, cc. 715-7. On 26 February 1864 he secured the chancellor’s agreement for an inquiry into Irish taxation and chaired the subsequent select committee which, despite recommending reforms, failed to secure any relief for Irish taxpayers.Hansard, 26 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1199-1208; Freeman’s Journal, 29 Feb., 2, 12 May, 9, 16, 21, 23, 30 June, 14 July 1864; PP 1864 (513) (513-I) xv. 1, 55; PP 1865 (330) xii. 1. Nevertheless, having conducted the inquiry with ‘remarkable intelligence’, Dunne secured the committee’s re-appointment in March 1865. He was, however, obstructed by the Treasury’s tardy provision of relevant returns and, finding himself in a minority due to the absence of several committee members, failed to have his ‘pro-national’ report adopted.Freeman’s Journal, 2 Mar., 8 Apr., 22 May 1865. The report of Sir Stafford Northcote, which concluded that taxation had not interfered with the development of Irish industry, was adopted instead: Ibid., 25 July 1864, 13 May 1865. For more details, see Kennedy, Irish protest against over-taxation, 36, 41-57.

Dunne wanted to improve passenger communication between Great Britain and Ireland, and in May 1863 got the House to agree to a select committee on the condition of Holyhead harbour, which he chaired.Hansard, 12 May 1863, vol. 170, cc. 1660-1; Freeman’s Journal, 15 May, 1, 11, 18, 22, 26 June, 2, 6, 16 July 1863, 13 June 1864, 11 Apr. 1865; PP 1863 (445) vii. 223. He also took a close interest in the reform of the Irish fisheries, and that July introduced a successful bill to assimilate the salmon fishery laws of Ireland and England.Freeman’s Journal, 7 Nov. 1862, 9, 13 Feb., 2, 28 July 1863, 13 Oct. 1866; PP 1863 (1) iv. 13. He also sat on the select committee on Irish coastal fisheries in June 1867: Freeman’s Journal, 18 Mar., 27 May, 5, 7, 29 June, 3, 5, 10 July 1867; PP 1867 (443) (443-I) xiv. 1, 355. In June 1864 he joined a deputation to Palmerston which lobbied for a naval station to be established in Ireland, and in May 1865 participated in efforts to expand the country’s manufactures, serving on the select committee on mines during 1865-7.Freeman’s Journal, 9 June 1864, 15 May 1865; PP 1865 (398) xii. 605; PP 1866 (431) (431-I) xiv. 1, 557; PP 1867 (496) (496-I) xiii. 1, 107.

Having supported measures of Catholic relief, such as the provision for prison chaplains, Dunne was re-elected for Queen’s County at the top of the poll in 1865, the Irish National League having endorsed his efforts to reduce Ireland’s tax burden.Freeman’s Journal, 23 Apr. 1863, 14 May 1864, 21 July, 8 Nov. 1865; C.G. Duffy, The League of North and South. An Episode in Irish History 1850-1854 (1886), 263. Although regarded as a ‘staunch Unionist’, Dunne’s Blue Book on the subject was greatly valued by advocates of Home Rule: Freeman’s Journal, 4 June 1873, 3 Nov. 1875. Side-stepping the issue of tenant-right, he pledged to oppose a Russell ministry and, as ‘an advocate of union amongst the Irish members’, hoped to see the construction of ‘a formidable Irish party’ in parliament.Freeman’s Journal, 18, 25 July 1865. He subsequently drew attention to the paucity of coastal defences on the west coast of Ireland, and Bantry Bay in particular, in the face of the Fenian threat from America, and frequently tabled parliamentary questions to ministers on a variety of mainly Irish topics.Freeman’s Journal, 27 Mar. 1865, 7 Mar. 1866. For example the Irish portions of the commission inquiries into railways and coal fields: Freeman’s Journal, 2 Mar., 28 July 1866. An opponent of the abolition of church rates and the ballot, he criticised the Liberals’ Irish reform bill, describing it as ‘rashly and crudely framed’ and a ‘mere dodge’ designed to buttress the government’s political influence.Freeman’s Journal, 10 Mar., 9 May, 23 July 1866.

Dunne remained diligent at Westminster, serving on committees on he laws relating to art unions, the mortality of British troops in China, and introducing, without success, bills to amend the Tramway Acts of 1860 and 1861.PP 1866 (332) (332-I) vii. 1, 97; PP 1866 (442) (442-I) xv. 1, 505; PP 1866 (213) v. 459; PP 1866 (418) xi. 643. He was admitted to the Irish privy council in October 1866, attended two Conservative party meetings at Downing Street, 25 Feb., 15 Mar. 1867, and joined the subsequent conference on the reform demonstration at Hyde Park that May.Daily News, 26 Feb. 1867; The Times, 16 Mar. 1867; Standard, 7 May 1867. Returning to his chief passion, he spoke in support of Sir Joseph McKenna’s motion on Irish taxation that July, arguing that since the abolition of the Irish exchequer in 1816 ‘England had absorbed a large portion of the revenue of the sister country’ which, he continued to insist, was taxed ‘wholly out of proportion to her resources’.Hansard, 9 July 1867, vol. 188, cc. 1301-2; Kennedy, History of the Irish protest against over-taxation, 67. That year he also supported efforts to equalise the pay and allowances of the British and Irish militias, and regularly gave notices of motions and orders for returns largely concerned with Irish revenues. He took a particular interest in the administration of the Irish registry of deeds and sat on select committees on the river Shannon, the Curragh bill, the Irish petit juries bill and grand jury presentments.Freeman’s Journal, 5 June, 16 Aug. 1867, 24, 26 Feb., 23, 30 Mar., 2, 6 Apr., 18, 28 May, 11 June 1868; PP 1867-68 (277) (277-I) x. 555, 693; Freeman’s Journal, 22 June 1868; PP 1867-68 (404) x. 1; PP 1867-68 (390) x. 549. He had already moved for an inquiry into the law governing Irish grand juries in 1854: Freeman’s Journal, 21 Mar. 1854. As the representative of a largely Catholic constituency he was prudently absent from the division on Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish Church, 3 Apr. 1868.Freeman’s Journal, 4 May 1868. He did, however, subsequently assist the re-organisation of the newly disestablished church, becoming a member of the General Synod of the Protestant Church in Ireland: Freeman’s Journal, 12, 15, 19, 20 Jan., 2, 5, 7 Mar., 19 Oct., 1, 4 Nov. 1870, 15 Apr. 1871.

Having been ‘as popular on both sides of the house as any other of the Irish members’, Dunne disappeared from public life for some years after abandoning the contest for Queen’s County at the 1868 general election, when his trenchant opposition to disestablishment, which he believed to have been conceived ‘merely for party purposes’, proved unpopular.In spite of retaining the support of the local gentry and offering qualified support for land reform, he was unwilling to ‘expose his supporters to an unequal contest’: Freeman’s Journal, 11 June, 4, 16 Nov. 1868; The Times, 26 Nov. 1868; Morning Post, 9 July 1874. It is believed that he obtained loans from Germany to build a neo-gothic castle at Brittas in 1869, and in 1871 he published The Pope and his infallibility. He was appointed honorary colonel of the Queen’s County militia in April 1873.F. Boase, Modern English Biography, i (1892), 939. The castle burned down on June 25, 1942, but is currently being rebuilt: www.askaboutireland.ie. He stood as a Conservative Home Ruler for his old constituency at the 1874 general election, yet, despite being spoken of as a possible chief secretary for Ireland, he failed to secure a seat.Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 45; Bradford Observer, 10 Jan. 1874; Belfast News-letter, 21 Feb. 1874.

Having been in poor health, Dunne died of dysentery in July 1874 at Brittas House and was buried in the family vault at Kilmainham cemetery. He was succeeded by his brother, Edward Meadows Dunne, a barrister and land agent, who had unsuccessfully contested Queen’s County as a Conservative in 1832.Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 46; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1862), i. 405. Dunne’s obituary stated that he was regarded by all classes as ‘a thorough Irishman and lover of his country’ and ‘the very beau ideal of the “real old Irish gentleman.”’Freeman’s Journal, 8 July 1874.