The Republic of Ireland Act 1948

Template:IrishR The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 is an Act of the Oireachtas whose primary provision is that the Republic of Ireland (or Poblacht na hÉireann in Irish) is the official description (and not name) for Ireland. The Act also formally abolished the remaining roles of the King of Ireland (the British monarch) in the government of the state. The Act was enacted in both the Irish and English languages. It was signed by the President of Ireland on 21 December 1948 and came into force on 18 April1949, the thirty third anniversary of the the Proclamation of the original Irish Republic.

Background

The Republic of Ireland Act repealed the External Relations Act, 1936. Under that Act, King George VI as King of Ireland acted as the Irish head of state in international relations. He accredited ambassadors and on Ireland's behalf accepted credentials appointing foreign ambassadors to Ireland. The Republic of Ireland Act removed this role (the last remaining role) from the King and vested it instead in the President of Ireland, making the then President of Ireland, Seán T. O'Kelly, unambiguously the Irish head of state.

See also: Irish head of state from 1936 to 1949

In 1945, when asked if he planned to do so, then Taoiseach Eamon de Valera had replied, "we are a republic", having refused to say so before for eight years. He also insisted that Ireland had no king, but simply used an external king as an organ in international affairs. However, that was not the view of constitutional lawyers including de Valera's Attorneys-General, whose disagreement with de Valera's interpretation only came to light when the state papers from the 1930s and 1940s were released to historians. Nor was it the view in the international arena, who believed that Ireland did have a king, George VI who had been proclaimed King of Ireland in December 1936, and to whom they accredited ambassadors to Ireland. King George, in turn, as "King of Ireland" accredited all Irish diplomats. All treaties signed by the Irish Taoiseach or Minister for External Affairs were signed in the name of King George.

De Valera did have a history of making statements on constitutional matters that were legally questionable. His belief that the Governor-General's post had been abolished by a constitutional amendment in December 1936 was privately rejected by his own Attorney-General, James Geoghegan, Secretary to the Executive Council (i.e., the state's main civil servant and his own closest advisor), Maurice Moynihan, the Parliamentary Draftsman's Office (which drafted legislation) and other leading legal figures in the government. To sort out what was privately seen as a legal mess, de Valera had had to introduce a second enactment, the Executive Power (Consequential Provisions) Act, 1937, which was backdated as if effective from the original date of the supposed abolition in December 1936. In 1947, de Valera's new Attorney-General, future President of Ireland Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, began drafting a bill to grant to the President the powers in international affairs possessed by the King. Part of the debate in government revolved around whether a republic should be declared in the bill. The very existence of the debate is evidence that de Valera's latest attorney-general and part of his cabinet, maybe even de Valera himself, did not agree with de Valera's statement in 1945 that the Irish state was already a republic. In the end, the draft bill was never submitted to the Oireachtas for approval. Whether that is because it was simply abandoned or because de Valera planned to introduce it after the 1948 general election (which he unexpectedly lost) is unclear.

Introduction of the bill

The bill to declare Ireland a republic was introduced in 1948 by the new Taoiseach, John A. Costello of the Fine Gael party. What caused the bill to be introduced remains a mystery. Costello made the announcement that the bill was to be introduced when he was in Ottawa, during an official visit to Canada. It had been suggested that it was a spur of the moment reaction to offence caused by the Governor-General of Canada, Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis who was of Northern Irish descent and who allegedly placed symbols of Northern Ireland, notably a replica of the famous Roaring Meg cannon used in the Siege of Derry, before an affronted Costello at a state dinner. What is certain is that the prior arrangement whereby toasts to the King (symbolising Canada) and the President (representing Ireland) were to be proposed, was broken. Only a toast to the King was proposed, to the fury of the Irish delegation. Shortly afterwards Costello announced the plan to declare the republic.

However, according to all but one of the ministers in Costello's cabinet, the decision to declare a republic had already been made prior to Costello's Canadian visit. Costello's revelation of the decision was because the Sunday Independent (an Irish newspaper) had discovered the fact and was about to "break" the story as an exclusive. Nevertheless one minister, the controversial Noel Browne, gave a different account in his autobiography, Against the Tide. He claimed Costello's announcement was done in a fit of anger of his treatment by the Governor-General and that when he returned, Costello, at an assembly of ministers in his home, offered to resign because of his manufacture of a major government policy initiative on the spot in Canada. Yet according to Browne, all the ministers agreed that they would refuse to accept the resignation and also agreed to manufacture the story of a prior cabinet decision.

The evidence of what really happened remains ambiguous. There is no record of a prior decision to declare a republic before Costello's Canadian trip, among cabinet papers for 1948, which supports Browne's claim. However, in what is generally regarded as one of its most ill-judged decisions, the Costello government refused to allow the Secretary to the Government, Maurice Moynihan, to attend cabinet meetings and take minutes, because they believed he was too close to their enemy, Éamon de Valera. (De Valera had been in office continually for sixteen years and directly preceded them. As Moynihan had been the state's chief civil servant for much of that time, it was hardly surprising that he would have been close to de Valera. Still, no evidence suggests that his closeness to de Valera led him into active antagonism towards Costello's ministers, and they reversed their decision when they returned to government in 1954.) Rather than entrust the minute-taking to Moynihan, the cabinet entrusted it to a Parliamentary Secretary (junior minister), future Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave. Given that Cosgrave had never kept minutes before, it is understandable that Cosgrave's minutes, at least early on in the government, proved less than a thorough record of government decisions. So whether the issue was never raised, was raised but undecided on, was subjected to a decision taken informally, or was subjected to a decision taken formally, remains obscure on the basis of the 1948 cabinet documentation.

In addition, Browne's own book, published in the 1980s, is littered with major factual inaccuracies and thus is seen as equally unreliable. The last two surviving ministers of that cabinet in the 1980s, former Minister for External Affairs Seán MacBride and Browne, publicly and trenchantly disagreed with one another as to the events that led to the declaration of the republic. What is certain is that one man's account is wrong. But it has proved impossible to determine which one is wrong.

At any rate, the Act was enacted with all parties voting for it. De Valera did suggest that it would have been better to reserve the declaration of the republic until Irish unity had been achieved, a comment hard to reconcile with his 1945 claim that the Irish state was already a republic. Speaking in Seanad Éireann Costello told senators that as a matter of law, the King was indeed "King of Ireland" and Irish head of state and the President of Ireland was in effect no more than first citizen and a local notable, until the new law came into force.

Text of Act

The Republic of Ireland Act is itself quite short, running to just 5 brief sections, and is therefore set out in full as follows:

Number 22 of 1948

The Republic of Ireland Act, 1948

An act to repeal the Executive Authority (external relations) Act 1936, to declare that the description of the state shall be the Republic of Ireland, and to enable the President to exercise the executive power of any executive function of the state in or in connection with its external relations. (21 December, 1948)

Be it enacted by the Oireachtas as follows:-

1. The Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 (No.58 of 1936) is hereby repealed.
2. It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland.
3. The President, on the authority and on the advice of the Government, may exercise the executive power or any executive function of the State in or in connection with its external relations.
4. This Act shall come into operation on such day as the Government may by order appoint.
5. This Act may be cited as The Republic of Ireland Act, 1948.

The King

Section 1 of the Act repealed the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936. By doing so the Act abolished the last remaining functions of the King of Ireland (the British monarch) in relation to Ireland. These functions had related to the issuance and acceptance of letters of credence of diplomatic and consular representatives and the conclusion of international agreements. Section 3 provides that the President of Ireland may instead exercise these functions and any other functions in relation to Ireland's external (or foreign) relations. This effectively upgraded the President to a full head of state.

The Commonwealth

At the time the Act came into force, a requirement for a country's membership of the British Commonwealth was that be a Dominion, where the British monarch was head of state. Thus, after the Act, Ireland had definitively left the Commonwealth. Ireland had not participated actively in the Commonwealth for some years prior to the Act, but was regarded, at least by the other Commonwealth governments, as not having left the Commonwealth.

The London Declaration, which permitted republics to remain within the Commonwealth, was promulgated shortly afterwards. The Irish government opted not to reapply for membership of the Commonwealth, unlike India, which became a republic within the Commonwealth in 1950. The Irish government's decision was criticised by then Leader of the Opposition Éamon de Valera, who considered applying for membership in the 1950s.

Republic of Ireland Description

Main article: Names of the Irish state

Section 2 of the Act quite simply provides:

"It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland."

Notably, the Act did not change the official name of the state. It merely provided the description for the State. The Constitution of Ireland provides that Ireland (or Éire in Irish) is the official name of the State and if the Act had purported to change the name, it would have been unconstitutional as it was not a constitutional amendment. The distinction between a description and a name has sometimes caused confusion. The Taoiseach, John A. Costello who introduced the Republic of Ireland Bill in the Oireachtas explained the difference in the following way:

If I say that my name is Costello and that my description is that of senior counsel, I think that will be clear to anybody who wants to know. If the Senator will look at Article 4 of the Constitution she will find that the name of the State is Eire. Section 2 of this Bill declares that “this State shall be described as the Republic of Ireland.” Its name in Irish is Eire and in the English language Ireland. Its description in the English language is “the Republic of Ireland.”.

United Kingdom response

Main article: Ireland Act 1949

The British government responded to the Republic of Ireland Act by enacting the Ireland Act 1949, which provided that Irish citizens in the UK would not be treated as foreigners.

It also provided that "that part of Ireland heretofore known as Eire...may [be referred to] as the Republic of Ireland.” Between the adoption Irish Constitution in 1937 and the Ireland Act, UK law had only formally acknowledged Eire [sic; not Éire] (and not Ireland) as the name of the Irish state. Notwithstanding the UK's acceptance of the Republic of Ireland description, the question of the correct name for the state remained a source of diplomatic friction for several decades afterwards.

The UK's Ireland Act also gave a legislative guarantee that Northern Ireland would continue to remain a part of the United Kingdom unless the parliament of Northern Ireland formally expressed a wish to join a United Ireland. This "unionist veto" became a source of much controversy in Dublin until 1998.

King George VI of the United Kingdom sent a message of goodwill to the new Irish head of state, President Seán T. O'Kelly. O'Kelly's new status as head of state was celebrated by the first ever state visit by an Irish president abroad, to the Holy See in 1950. En route, he planned to "do the decent thing and call upon Your Majesty", but timetabling problems prevented what was intended to be the first ever public meeting between a British king and an Irish president.

Reassessment

In 1996, the Constitution Review Group considered amending the Constitution to declare that Ireland is a republic. It decided against recommending such an amendment. This was the second time that such an amendment was considered by committee.

Éamon De Valera's grandson, Éamon Ó Cuív, while a government minister in the 1990s, advocated Irish membership of the Commonwealth.

Bibliography and sources

• Noel Browne, Against the Tide
• Bunreacht na hÉireann (1937 Irish Constitution)
• Stephen Collins, The Cosgrave Legacy
• Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera (Hutchinson, 1993)
• Brian Farrell, De Valera's Constitution and Ours
• F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine
• David Gwynn Morgan, Constitutional Law of Ireland
• Tim Murphy and Patrick Twomey (eds.) Ireland's Evolving Constitution: 1937–1997 Collected Essays (Hart, 1998) ISBN 1901362175
• Alan J. Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland 1782–1992 (Irish Academic Press, 1994) ISBN 07165252283

Also: Dáil Debates, papers from the National Archives of Ireland and information from a forthcoming book.

External links

• Republic of Ireland Act, 1948