1856 in Ireland

Events

• 1 January – M. H. Gill, printer to Dublin University, purchases the publishing and bookselling business of James McGlashan, renaming it McGlashan & Gill, the predecessor of Gill & Macmillan.
• 29 September – the neoclassical Roman Catholic St Mel's cathedral, Longford, opens for worship.
• 22 October
• * Coláiste Mhuire in Mullingar, County Westmeath opens its doors to students.
• * Grand National Banquet for soldiers returned from the Crimean War in a warehouse in Custom House docks, Dublin.

  Sport

Births

• 14 February – Frank Harris, author, editor, journalist and publisher.
• 20 March – John Lavery, artist.
• 2 May – Matt Talbot, manual labourer and ascetic.
• 26 July – George Bernard Shaw, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature .
• 18 August – Walter Richard Pollock Hamilton, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1879 at Futtehabad, Afghanistan.
• 17 November – Thomas Taggart, politician in the United States.
• 28 November – Patrick O'Donnell, Cardinal, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
• 21 December
• *Catherine Coll, mother of Éamon de Valera
• *Sidney Royse Lysaght, writer
• *Tomás Ó Criomhthain, writer and fisherman.

  Deaths

• 27 January – John Lalor, journalist and author.
• 4 February – William Hare, 2nd Earl of Listowel, peer and MP.
• 18 March – Henry Pottinger, soldier and colonial administrator, first Governor of Hong Kong.
• 31 May – Yankee Sullivan, bare knuckle fighter and boxer.
• 2 June – Robert Carew, 1st Baron Carew, politician.
• 8 December – Father Theobald Mathew, temperance reformer.