Home rule organisations and former party members left a distinctive mark on the politics of independent Ireland. The fact that the IPP suffered electoral collapse in 1918 or that it was often remembered in jaundiced terms did not mean that former members or their relatives were shut out from Irish public life. The sons of John Redmond and John Dillon were both prominent politicians—the latter went on to serve as leader of Fine Gael and leader of the opposition between 1959 and 1965. As illustrated in the statistical tables in this study, a significant number of TDs and senators shared such a lineage—between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of Fine Gael TDs in the 1930s and 1940s had some form of traceable home rule roots; many of these were prominent politicians who sought to commemorate and shape public debate on the Irish Party. As this study has demonstrated, arguments about the party's role in Irish history and the legacy of leaders such as Redmond did not begin with debates on revisionism, the Northern Ireland peace process or the recent Decade of Centenaries. In fact, the early decades of independence established many of the key arguments and tropes around the memory of the party and were crucial in historicising the IPP.

While the legacy of political activism bequeathed by the Irish Party may have helped to solidify Irish democratic norms, particularly as European states faced threats from the right and the left in the inter-war period, enduring Irish Party loyalty was an integral part of the party fragmentation which the Free State experienced in common with many newly independent states of the era. The place of former Irish Party activists and supporters provides a unique prism within which to examine many of the parties which emerged in the early decades of independence. This study echoes others which highlight the continued centrality of land as a driver of political activism after 1922. As agrarian factions had provided the backbone of the home rule movement, it was hardly surprising that many former local organisers found a home in the Farmers’ Party. The ITGWU also built on the old networks of the Irish Land and Labour Association in Munster, allowing some absorption of O’Brienites into the Labour party, while prominent ex-home rulers joined the ranks of the independent deputies.