The Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment (Ireland) Act 1860, better known as Deasy's Act, was an Act of Parliament preceding the agrarian unrest in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 in the 1880s, the "Land War

Land War

The Land War in Irish history was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and was dedicated to bettering the position of tenant farmers and ultimately to a redistribution of land to tenants from...

".

The Act was named after its promoter Rickard Deasy

Rickard Deasy

Rickard Deasy PC was an Irish lawyer and judge.Dease was elected as Member of Parliament for County County on 23 April 1855 in a by-election following Edmond Roche's elevation to the peerage. He was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1859 and then made Attorney-General for Ireland in 1860,...

, the Attorney-General for Ireland

Attorney-General for Ireland

The Attorney-General for Ireland was an Irish and then United Kingdom government office. The holder was senior to the Solicitor-General for Ireland, and advised the Crown on Irish legal matters...

 in the Liberal Party

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 government of Lord Palmerston.

Deasy's Act amended the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1826. The 1860 Act was itself amended by the Irish Land Acts

Irish Land Acts

The Land Acts were a series of measures to deal with the question of peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909...

.

The Act made contract law the basis for tenancies and abolished any feudal rents paid by services to a landlord, or by payments in kind.

Section 2

Section 2 remains the most important part of this Act. It provides that all agreements for the sale of Land (amongst others) must be in writing in order to be enforced.

Continuing effect

At a specialist law reform conference in 2003 it was said that Deasy's Act "continues as the foundation of the law of landlord and tenant in Ireland".