Plunkett, Horace Curzon (1854–1932)

Irish agricultural reformer, founder of the Irish agricultural cooperative movement. The third son of Lord Dunsany, a County Meath landowner, Plunkett was educated at Eton and Oxford and spent time cattle-ranching in the mid-western USA. He returned to Ireland determined to transform agricultural commerce. His cooperative movement was based on a model set up by Danish farmers, who established creamery societies that used the recently invented mechanical cream separator and steam-powered churn, enabling farmers to control the processing of their milk.

Plunkett became a member of Parliament at Westminster in 1892. In 1900 he persuaded the government to establish the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, the first fully-fledged Irish government department, with himself as vice-president.

In 1904 his publication Ireland in the New Century, a critique of Irish social and economic life, was attacked, and in 1907 he was forced to resign. In 1917 Plunkett was elected head of a government-sponsored Irish Convention, aimed at allowing nationalists and unionists to reach an accommodation. The convention failed but Plunkett was later nominated to the Free State senate.