The Court of Exchequer (Ireland) was one of the senior courts of common law in Ireland. It was the mirror image of the equivalent court in England. It was one of the four courts which gave their name to the building still called the Four Courts in Dublin.
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According to Elrington Ball[1] the Irish Court of Exchequer was functioning by 1309, with a Chief Baron and at least one associate baron. Later in the century it moved briefly to Carlow, which was then closer to the centre of the Pale, but local disturbances soon brought it back to Dublin. Although its workload was traditionally less heavy than that of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland), it became notorious for slowness and inefficiency; an eighteenth-century lawyer spoke of "disorganisation almost past remedy".[1] By the mid nineteenth century it had overtaken King's Bench as the busiest common law court, and the death of the Chief Baron, Stephen Woulfe, in 1840, was widely blamed on the workload.[1]
On the passing of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland) 1877, the Court of Exchequer was merged with the other three courts and became a division of the High Court of Justice for Ireland. In a further reorganisation in 1897 the Exchequer Division was abolished. The last Chief Baron, Christopher Palles, retained his rank until he retired in 1916.[2]