St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
Saint Patrick's Cathedral () in Dublin, Ireland, founded in 1191, is the National Cathedral of the Church of Ireland. With its spire, St. Patrick's is the tallest church (not Cathedral) in Ireland and the largest. Christ Church Cathedral, also a Church of Ireland cathedral in Dublin, is designated as the local Cathedral of the diocese of Dublin and Glendalough.
St Mary's Pro-Cathedral
John Charles McQuaid, who served as Archbishop from the 1940s to the early 1970s, bought the gardens in the centre of Merrion Square and announced plans to erect a cathedral there, but to the relief of Dubliners, for whom the gardens were an oasis of nature in the centre of a busy city, his plans never came to pass and the gardens were eventually handed over by his successor to Dublin Corporation and opened to the public. While it is suggested periodically that the Church of Ireland, which has a relatively small membership, might hand over one of its cathedrals to the Catholic Church, no serious proposals have been made for such an arrangement. The Church of Ireland did offer one of the cathedrals to the Catholic church in the late 20th century but the offer was declined by the Catholic hierarchy apparently due to the projected cost of maintaining the building. (The Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral (which serves as the "national cathedral" of the Church of Ireland - Christchurch is treated as the diocesan cathedral of Dublin) did suggest allowing Catholic Masses to be celebrated in St. Patrick's but the idea was dropped after opposition within the Church of Ireland.) Though theoretically the possibility of erecting a new Catholic cathedral remains on the agenda, in reality most of the funds collected for the building of a new cathedral have been spent erecting new churches in what was for a lengthy period a rapidly growing archdiocese.