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Links to the Chamber of Commerce

The Ouzel Galley Society was closely linked with the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. The other prominent commercial club was the Committee of Merchants, radical businessmen who organised and funded the erection of the Royal Exchange (now Dublin City Hall). They also sought (and failed) to stop the Dublin Custom House from moving to its present site on the north side of the river. The old Custom House was located where the Clarence Hotel now stands. Its relocation to the east, and the subsequent building of a new city bridge to service the new houses in this area, resulted in most of the city’s merchant warehouses and property losing their purpose and value. Some of these men radicalised and formed the Dublin Chamber of Commerce in 1783. The close overlap in this period in membership of the Ouzel Galley Society and the Chamber of Commerce has prompted historians to see the society as a forerunner of the chamber.