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.
• 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 Universities in Great Britain or Ireland, and the first in Ireland. Her degree is granted by the Royal University of Ireland.
• 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.

  Arts and literature

• 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.

  Sport

Association Football

• ;International
• :26 January Ireland 0–5 Scotland
• :9 February Ireland 0–6 Wales
• :23 February Ireland 1–8 England
• ;Irish Cup
• :Winners: Distillery 5–0 Wellington Park

  Gaelic Games

• 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.

  Births

• 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.
• 16 December – J. M. Kerrigan, actor.
• 17 December – Stanislaus Joyce, scholar and writer, brother of James Joyce.
• ;Full date unknown
• :*Patrick Belton, Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal TD, President of the anti-communist Irish Christian Front.
• :*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.

  Deaths

• 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.