1914 in Ireland

Events

• 17 January – Edward Carson inspects a parade of the East Belfast Regiment of the Ulster Volunteers.
• 20 February – the Fethard-on-Sea life-boat capsizes on service off the County Wexford coast: nine crew are lost.
• 26 February –, designed as the third and largest, is launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast.
• 1 March – three outbreaks of foot and mouth disease are confirmed in County Cork.
• 9 March – the British Prime Minister proposes to allow the Ulster counties to hold a vote on whether or not to join a Home Rule parliament in Dublin.
• 20 March – Curragh incident: British Army officers stationed at the Curragh Camp resign their commissions rather than be ordered to resist action by Unionist Ulster Volunteers if the Home Rule Bill is passed. The government backs down and they are reinstated.
• 2 April – Cumann na mBan, the Irish republican women's paramilitary organisation, is formed in Dublin as an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers.
• 6 April – the second reading of the Home Rule Bill is carried in Westminster.
• 24-25 April – Larne Gun Running: 35,000 rifles and over 3 million rounds of ammunition from Germany are landed at Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee for the Ulster Volunteers and quickly distributed around Ulster by motor transport.
• 25 May – the House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Irish Home Rule Bill.
• 23 June-14 July – the Government of Ireland Bill passes through the House of Lords. It allows Ulster counties to vote on whether or not they want to come under Dublin's jurisdiction. The wishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone are eventually ignored.
• 10 July – the Provisional Government of Ulster meets for the first time in the Ulster Hall. It vows to keep Ulster in trust for the King and the British constitution.
• 21 July – a conference is opened at Buckingham Palace by the King. It is hoped that unionists and nationalists attending will break the impasse over Home Rule.
• 24 July – the Buckingham Palace conference ends in failure. Nationalists and Unionists present cannot agree in principle or detail.
• 26 July – Howth gun-running: Erskine Childers and his wife Molly sail into Howth in his yacht and land 2,500 guns for the Irish Volunteers. Troops returning to Dublin, having been called out to assist police in attempting to prevent the Volunteers from moving the arms to the city, fire on a crowd of protestors at Bachelors Walk, killing three; a fourth man dies later from bayonet wounds.
• 4 August – World War I: Declaration of war by the United Kingdom on the German Empire.
• September – Ulster Division formed as a division of the British New Army from Ulster Volunteers.
• 18 September – the Government of Ireland Act receives Royal Assent but is postponed for the duration of World War I by the simultaneous Suspensory Act and in practice never comes into effect in its original form.
• 20 September – in a speech at Woodenbridge, County Wicklow, John Redmond calls on members of the Irish Volunteers to go "wherever the firing line extends". The majority do so, fighting in the 10th and 16th Division alongside their volunteer counterparts from the 36th Division; the rump Irish Volunteers split off on 24 September.
• 18 October – the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet takes shelter in Lough Swilly while Scapa Flow is secured against submarine attack.
• 27 October – World War I: Royal Navy super-dreadnought battleship , is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin.
• 5 December – the Irish Volunteers appoint a headquarters staff, with Eoin MacNeill as chief of staff.
• Welsh evangelist George Jeffreys establishes his first church in Belfast, predecessor of the Elim Pentecostal Church.

  Arts and literature

• February
• *James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man commences serialization in The Egoist.
• *Lord Dunsany's collection Five Plays is published in London.
• 4 February – a staging of George A. Birmingham's comedy General John Regan at Westport Town Hall provokes a riot.
• June – James Joyce's Dubliners, a collection of fifteen short stories depicting the Irish middle classes in and around Dublin during the early 20th century, is published in London.
• Terence MacSwiney's contemporary play The Revolutionist is published.

  Sports

Football

• ;International
• :Ireland win the British Home Championship football tournament outright for the first time.
• :19 January Wales 1–2 Ireland
• :14 February England 0–3 Ireland
• :14 March Ireland 1–1 Scotland
• ;Irish League
• :Winners: Linfield
• ;Irish Cup
• :Winners: Glentoran 3–1 Linfield

  Golf

• Balmoral Golf Club opened in Belfast.

  Births

• 15 January – James Flanagan, only Roman Catholic Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• 18 January – Patrick Lindsay, Fine Gael TD and lawyer.
• 23 February – Sheila Galvin, Fianna Fáil TD.
• 10 March – Michael Torrens-Spence, held commissions in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Air Force, the British Army, Ulster Special Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment.
• 30 March – Eamon Kelly, actor.
• 28 May – William Blease, Baron Blease, trade unionist and politician.
• 19 June – Julia Clifford, fiddle player and traditional musician.
• 10 July – Charles Donnelly, poet, killed at the Jarama Front, Spanish Civil War.
• 30 July – Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, journalist, author, sports official and sixth president of the International Olympic Committee.
• 5 August – Charles Cuffe, cricketer.
• 10 September – Terence O'Neill, Fourth Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
• 13 September – Michael F. Kitt, Fianna Fáil TD.
• 8 November – Jackie Brown, footballer.
• 14 November – Joseph Barnes, medical missionary.
• 10 December – Séamus Dolan, Cathaoirleach of Seanad Éireann 1977-1981.
• 31 December – Ernest Gébler, writer.
• ;Full date unknown
• :*Aidan MacCarthy, doctor, RAF medical officer, captured by the Japanese during the Second World War.
• :*Eddie McAteer, Nationalist Party MP.
• :*Sydney Sparkes Orr, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania.

  Deaths

• 7 January – Patrick Weston Joyce, historian and musicologist.
• 23 February – Thomas McCarthy Fennell, Fenian political prisoner transported to Western Australia.
• 4 March – William Hamilton, cricketer.
• 25 March – Robert James McMordie, solicitor, politician and Lord Mayor of Belfast.
• 31 March – Timothy Daniel Sullivan, journalist, politician and poet, wrote the Irish national hymn God Save Ireland.
• 19 May – Frederick James Walker, motor cycle racer, killed at 1914 Isle of Man TT races.
• 23 June – Colonel John Burke, soldier in America.
• 12 August – John Philip Holland, engineer, developed the first Royal Navy submarine.
• 1 September – George Henry Morris, soldier, first commanding officer to lead an Irish Guards battalion into battle, killed in action.
• 15 October – Anthony Traill, provost of Trinity College Dublin.
• 2 November – Charles FitzClarence, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1899 near Mafeking, South Africa, killed in action.
• 10 November – Lydia Shackleton, botanical artist.
• 22 December – John Nesbitt Kirchhoffer, lawyer and politician in Canada.
• 26 December – Thomas Kelly-Kenny, British Army general who served in the Second Boer War.