Maurice Dockrell (Unionist politician)

Sir Maurice Edward Dockrell (21 December 1850 – 5 August 1929) was an Irish businessman and politician from Dublin.

At the 1918 general election, he was elected as Irish Unionist Alliance Member of Parliament for Dublin Rathmines from 1918 to 1922.

Dockrell was critical of the strikers during the Dublin Lockout, referring to the strikes as "largely due to feeble government".^[1]

The 1918 election was a watershed in Ireland. Following the Easter Rising in 1916, Sinn Féin had grown in popularity, eclipsing the Irish Parliamentary Party. Sinn Féin candidates treated the election as an Irish general election, pledging not to take their seats in the British House of Commons, but to unilaterally establish a separate parliament in Dublin.

At the election, the Dublin University constituency returned two Unionists, and Dockrell was the only other Irish Unionist returned outside Ulster. Rather than joining Sinn Féin in the First Dáil, Dockrell took his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. On 28 June 1921 Dockrell was one of five Unionist leaders invited by to a meeting to discuss the future government of Ireland by the Irish leader Éamon de Valera.^[2]

His wife, Margaret Dockrell was a suffragist, philanthropist, and councillor. His son Henry Morgan Dockrell was later a Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD), and his grandsons Percy and Maurice Dockrell were also long-serving Fine Gael TDs.

Maurice ran the Dockrell family business of builders' providers in Dublin.