1861 in Ireland

Events

• 8-10 April – John George Adair of Glenveagh Castle evicts tenants at Derryveagh in County Donegal.
• 18 June – completion and official inauguration of the Wellington Monument, Dublin, in Phoenix Park, built to the design of Sir Robert Smirke.
• 21-30 August – Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, visit Ireland. They visit the Curragh Camp where Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, serving with the Grenadier Guards, has taken the actress Nellie Clifden as his first lover.
• 24 August – Mater Misericordiae Hospital is opened in Dublin by the Sisters of Mercy.
• 17 September – the, with a badly damaged rudder, anchors in Cork Harbour for temporary repairs.
• Reconstruction of Fort Camden as part of the Cork Harbour defences begins.

  Arts and literature

• July – Sheridan Le Fanu becomes editor and proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine. From October he begins serialization of his novel The House by the Churchyard in it.

  Sport

• Malahide Cricket Club founded.

  Births

• 23 January – Katharine Tynan, novelist and poet.
• 6 February – George Tyrrell, expelled Jesuit priest and Modernist Catholic scholar.
• 19 March – Joseph MacRory, Cardinal, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
• 15 April – William Hoey Kearney Redmond, nationalist politician, barrister, brother of John Redmond, killed in Battle of Messines.
• 21 June – Nathaniel Thomas Hone, cricketer.
• 16 October – J. B. Bury, historian, classical scholar and philologist.
• 3 November – Thomas O'Brien Butler, composer.
• 5 November – Sir Tim O'Brien, 3rd Baronet, cricketer.
• ;Full date unknown
• :*Frank Duffy, labour leader in America.
• :*Nathaniel Hill, artist.
• :*Leonard Greenham Star Molloy, soldier, doctor, M.P.

  Deaths

• 13 May – William Henry Fitton, geologist.
• 19 May – Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball, founder of Irish Branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Loreto schools.
• 27 June – Robert O'Hara Burke, explorer of Australia.
• 11 August – Catherine Hayes, opera diva.
• 10 December – John O'Donovan, scholar and first historic topographer.