1780 in Ireland

Events

• August – passenger boat service begins on Grand Canal between Dublin and Sallins.
• Sacramental Test abolished.
• Henry Grattan demands parliamentary independence.
• Lady Berry, sentenced to death for the murder of her son, is released when she agrees to become an executioner.
• The model cotton manufacturing town of Prosperous, County Kildare, developed by Robert Brooke, begins to function.

  Births

• January – William Henry Fitton, geologist.
• 12 March – David Barry, military surgeon and physiologist.
• 20 March – Myles Byrne, a leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and soldier in the service of France.
• 13 April – Alexander Mitchell, engineer and inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse.
• May – Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin, author, teacher, draper and politician.
• 17 August – George Croly, poet, novelist, historian and divine.
• 1 December – Edward Bowen, lawyer and politician in Lower Canada.
• 20 December – John Wilson Croker, statesman and author.
• ;Full date unknown
• :*Michael John Brenan, priest and ecclesiastical historian.
• :*Thady Connellan, schoolteacher and writer.
• :*Anne Devlin, republican and housekeeper to Robert Emmet.

  Deaths

• 2 February – Thomas Waite, civil servant.
• 3 June – Henry Denny Denson, soldier and politician in Nova Scotia.
• 25 August – William Bowles, naturalist.
• October – Robert Boyle-Walsingham, British Royal Navy officer and politician.
• 19 November – Jocelyn Deane, politician.