If you're a single woman with a dream of being the next Peggy Mitchell, today is your day.
Almost six thousand obsolete laws have just been scrapped by government, including a ban on single women "keeping taverns".
The Statute Law Revision Bill, 2015 - which the President will sign into law - helps to keep the Irish legal system 'simple and clearly comprehensible'.
The legislative clear-out means it's no longer illegal for nuns to settle in Dublin, and anyone can eat potatoes and oatmeal - not just the "lower orders".
Some of the other obscure and old-fashioned laws that have been consigned to the history books include:
- A Proclamation of 1712 for the apprehension of nuns settled in Dublin
- A Proclamation of 1678 providing that taverns, tippling houses and tobacco shops be removed from the vaults and cellars of Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin.
- A proclamation in 1817 that the consumption of potatoes and oatmeal should be kept for the “lower orders”.
- A reward for the capture or death of the Hugh ‘Arch Traitor’ O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone.
- A Proclamation of 1533 warning anybody who criticises the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn.
The update was lead by the Junior Public Reform Minister, Simon Harris, who said "we should see our obligations as extending beyond the creation of new legislation to also include the review and removal of that which is no longer necessary.”
More than 60,000 old laws have been scrapped from the Irish legal system over five different clear-outs.
And it seems there will be more banished to the history books yet. Minister Harris said "This is clearly not the end of the process but it constitutes a further milestone in the creation of a modern and accessible statute book and paves the way for further modernisation measures and assessment of more recent legislation.”
