10 January – An Aer LingusDouglas DC-3 aircraft on a London–Dublin flight crashed in Wales due to vertical draft in the mountains of Snowdonia, killing twenty passengers and the three crew. It was the airline's first fatal crash in its fifteen-year history.[1][2]
30 April – The Adoption Bill made provision for the adoption of orphans and children aged between six months and seven years born outside wedlock.
11 May – In Washington, D.C., the House Foreign affairs Committee explained that Ireland's exclusion from Marshall Aid was due to its wartime neutrality.
Louis le Brocquy's 1951 painting A Family sparked controversy when a group of art patrons offered to present it to the Dublin Municipal Gallery and it was rejected by the Art Advisory Committee on the grounds of incompetence.
6 February – King George VI of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (born 1895).
18 February – Ernest Alton, university professor, represented Dublin University in the Dáil from 1921 to 1927, represented Dublin University in the Seanad from 1938 to 1943 (born 1873).
27 February – Helena Concannon, Fianna Fáil politician and historian (born 1878).