User:Domer48/Republic of Ireland Sandbox

"Republic of Ireland" is a descriptive term for the Irish State. While the Irish State had been in essence a republic since 1922, it still had not describe itself as such. This final step was legislated for in the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. This was merely to make clear what had all along been inferred by the External Relations Act and the 1937 Constitution. The Act came into operation on 18 April 1949 - S.I 27/1949, and repealed the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936, and stated that "The President, on the authority and on the advice of the Government, may exercise the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." This severed the final link with the British Monarchy. The Act stated that the description of the State is Republic of Ireland, but the name of the State remains Ireland in accordance with Article 4 of the Constitution. While introducing the bill John A. Costello stressed that it did not purport to amend the constitution of 1937 which states that the name of the State is Éire, or in the English language, Ireland. Ireland, the Constitutional name of the State is the preferred term by the Irish Government. A view shared by the European Union and it's 27 Member States, who say Ireland must always be written and abbreviated according to the Interinstitutional Style Guide rules and that neither “Republic of Ireland” nor “Irish Republic” should be used when referring to the Irish State.

Origin
The Constitution of Dáil Eireann (1919) was enacted by the Sinn Féin candidates who were elected during the British General Election of December 1918, who then constituted themselves Dáil Eireann (Irish Parliament) in January 1919. The constitution was short, containing only five sections. It covered the appointment of a chairman, a Prime Minister and government, their powers in addition to the provision of funds and an audit of expenditure. The Dáil passed a “Declaration of Independence” and a “Democratic Programme” containing rights and duties. According to Basil Chubb author of The Government and Politics of Ireland, both these documents should be read as part of the Constitution.

The Constitution of the Irish Free State (1922) was the result of Treaty negotiations with the British Government following on from the Irish War of Independence.The Irish Leaders had to accept British arrangements for “emergent colonies” such as Commonwealth status, a number of safeguards for defence, a governor general and an oath of loyalty. With the coming to power of Eamon de Valera after the Irish general election, 1932 a revision of Ireland’s position within the Commonwealth became certain, and would result in the removal of the Free State Constitution. The removal of the Free State Constitution would involve the construction of an entirely new one and according to Chubb would be “unquestionably indigenous in character.” Chubb suggested that such a constitution would supersede the Commonwealth entirely and stress the republican and popular nature of the state. This process would culminate in 1937 with the adoption of Bunreacht Na hÉireann, the Constitution of Ireland

The Constitution of Ireland Bunreacht Na hÉireann enacted 1 July 1937, came into operation from 29th December, 1937. According to Chubb, Bunreacht Na hÉireann provided for a state that in essences was a republic, in that the basis of all government authority rested with the people. The “people” Chubb notes refered to the people of the whole island, made clear in Article 2 “The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland its islands and territorial seas.” However Chubb goes on to point out that Article 3 recognised the de facto situation pointing to the clause “pending the re-integration of the national territory” the laws would only apply to the twenty-six counties. Articles 2 & 3 would later be revised by means of the Nineteenth Amendment which took full effect on 2 December 1999. As amended they grant the right to be "part of the Irish Nation" to all of those born on the island of Ireland and express a desire for the peaceful political unification of the island subject to the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.



On April 18, 1949, The Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 (No. 22 of 1948), came into operation. Under the Act, Ireland formally left the British Commonwealth and became an independent republic. To affirm this, section two of the Act stated "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland."

This last breaking of the ties between Ireland and Britain, however, had begun in 1937. Éamon de Valera had gradually whittled away the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 and had significantly accomplished it with a new constitution in 1937. With its introduction, there would no longer be a Governor General representing the King, but a President who would be elected by the people. This had all been made possible by the British government’s introduction of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which granted sovereignty to its dominions.

In 1938, the British government, legislating for certain accords with the Irish State, included the following in the Eire (Confirmation of Agreements) Act: The territory which, in accordance with the provisions of the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act, 1922, and the Irish Free State Constitution Act, 1922, ... was required to be styled and known as the Irish Free State shall be styled and known as Eire, and accordingly, references in any enactment to the Irish Free State shall be construed as references to Eire. (s 1)

This reflected in British law the Irish Constitution of 1937, which meant that, in British and unionist minds, the twenty-six counties had become “Eire”.

The Irish Constitution had facilitated this usage by the British government by saying that: The name of the State is Éire, or in the English language, Ireland.

The phrase “or in the English language, Ireland” had been a late insertion, according to Mary Daly, and was adopted on foot of an amendment tabled in Dáil Éireann by an independent Teachta Dála (deputy). A typewritten preliminary draft of Heads of Constitution for Saorstát Éireann, she says, dated 18 May 1936, by John Hearne, who was a legal adviser in the Department of External Affairs, and played a leading role in drafting the 1937 Constitution, gave Article 1 as “Saorstát Éireann is a sovereign, independent state,” but Saorstát Éireann was crossed out in pencil and replaced with Eire, and this was repeated throughout Hearne’s draft. In a version dated 14 October 1936, Article 1, Daly notes, used the term “The Irish Nation”; this draft referred to “the parliament of Eire” and “the laws of Eire.”

Daltún Ó Callaigh suggests that a better drafting would have been simply “The name of the State is Ireland” and, in the Irish version, “Is ainm don Stét Eire”. He maintains that the existing style is rather like a German constitution saying in translation: “The name of the State is Deutschland or in the English language Germany.” Ó Callaigh noted that the Irish practice is peculiar, and that it facilitated partitionists by giving them a word to describe “the twenty-six counties which made the area seem to a non-Irish speaker like a natural entity in itself.”

Use of the term by Britain
thumb|250px|[[John A. Costello]] The British government would not use the term “Ireland” in any official document, according to Daly, until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which included an undertaking by the Irish government to delete Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution. Britain’s refusal to use the constitutional title of the Irish state, and its efforts to persuade other nations to adopt a similar practice, can be interpreted, Daly says, as an effort to exercise a residual authority over independent Ireland. Britain appeared to have gone to significant lengths, she says, to stop international organizations from using the name Ireland to designate the twenty six county state, and that this was often in response to pressure from the Northern Ireland government. In March 1938, the Irish government issued a directive to departments that “generally we should try to have Ireland and Irish used so far as possible in the English language in preference to Éire and ‘of Éire.’” The resolve on the part of the Irish government to call the state Ireland rather than Éire was, Daly suggests, a reaction to Britain’s decision to use Eire (without the accent) as the name of the independent Irish state.

This issue was raised during a Dáil debate on the bill, with John A Costello commenting on the “misuse by malicious people” of the word “Éire.” Section 2 of the bill provided a solution to this Costello said, and the “malicious newspapers who wanted to refer in a derogatory tone to this country…” Section 2 he said did something “fundamental,” and that it “declares to the world that when the bill was passed the State is unequivocally a republic, and that this “cannot be controverter or argued about.” Costello would he said rely on international courtesy “to prevent in the future this contemptuous reference to us and the name of our State being used for contemptuous purposes, as it has been, by some people and by some organs in the last few years.” According to Daly, the British government refusal to use the constitutional title of the Irish state was because they interpreted it as a claim by the Irish Government to the entire island. To support this interpretation they pointed to Article 2 of the Irish Constitution, which stated that “the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas.” However, Article 3, qualified this claim: Pending the reintegration of the national territory, and without prejudice to the right of the Parliament and Government established by this Constitution to exercise jurisdiction over the whole of that territory, the laws enacted by that parliament shall have the like area and extent of applications as the laws of Saorstát Éireann and the like extra territorial effect. thumb|[[Seán MacBride]] The Irish State was now in essence a republic, but it still did not describe itself as such. This final step would be legislated for and the Irish government signalled its intension to cut all remaining ties with the Commonwealth. In July 1948, a number of months before the Republic of Ireland Bill was introduced, the Minister for External Affairs, Seán MacBride, told the Dáil that Ireland was “certainly not a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations.” The Taoiseach John A. Costello explained that Ireland’s exit from the Commonwealth had been “a gradual development.” In 1949 Ireland, by passing the Republic of Ireland Act 1949, became a republic and left the Commonwealth. This decision to declare a republic, consisted of all political parties except Fianna Fáil.

The British government then passed the Ireland Act, which stated: It is hereby recognized and declared that the part of Ireland heretofore known as Eire ceased, as from the eighteenth day of April, nineteen hundred and forty-nine, to be part of His Majesty’s dominions.” (s 1.1) When the Ireland Act had been passed, Clement Attlee, the British prime minister, set out the protocol for future relations with Ireland, which though no longer a member of the Commonwealth, was not to be treated as a foreign state, "in view of the bonds of history and blood between the Commonwealth countries and the people of Southern Ireland."

In other words according to Ó Callaigh, it was acknowledged that “Éire” had become a republic in every sense and was outside not only the United Kingdom, as the twenty-six counties “had been in one way or another since 1922,” but the royal domain altogether, or “the Commonwealth” of which the British King was Head.

Historical guidelines for use
The 1948 Republic of Ireland Act however led to further misunderstanding over the name of the state. Section 2 stated: that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland. In Dáil Éireann, while introducing the bill John A. Costello stressed that it did not purport to amend the constitution of 1937: There is the name of the State and there is the description of the State. The name of the State is Ireland and the description of the State is the Republic of Ireland. That is the description of its constitutional and international status.

The Government Information Bureau in 1953 issued a directive, noting that Article 4 of the 1937 Constitution gave the name as “Éire” or, in the English language, “Ireland”; they noted that whenever the name of the state was mentioned in an English language document, Ireland should be used and that “Care should be taken,” the directive stated, “to avoid the use of the expression Republic of Ireland or Irish Republic in such a context or in such a manner as might suggest that it is a geographical term applicable to the area of the twenty‐Six counties.” This directive according to Daly remained in use for a number of years and that a copy was sent to Bord Fáilte, (the Irish tourist board), in 1959, reminding them not to use the title “the Republic of Ireland” on their promotional literature.

In 1963, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, to revise geography textbooks, the Irish Department of Education issued guidelines to delegates on politically correct geographic terminology: “British Isles” and “United Kingdom” were deemed objectionable and that delegates insist on “Ireland” and "Great Britain." The term "Republic of Ireland" should be avoided but that delegates were no longer to insist on “the Six Counties” in place of “Northern Ireland” in an attempt to improve relations with Northern Ireland.

In February 1964, the Irish government indicated it's wish to appoint an ambassador to Canberra. The one issue, however, that blocked the exchange of ambassadors had been the insistence of Australia that the letters carried by the Irish ambassador should have the royal title as "Queen Elizabeth the Second of the United Kingdom, Greater Britain and Northern Ireland, Australia." This was, according to Daly, despite the fact that the Royal Style and Titles Act did not mention Northern Ireland. However that November when Eoin MacWhite presented his credentials as Irish ambassador to Australia, a circular was issued to all Australian government departments indicating to them to use the word "Ireland" rather than "the Irish Republic." Britain was by the mid 1960s, the only country not to refer to the state as Ireland.

In 1976 both the British and Irish governments published the United Kingdom / Ireland Double Taxation Convention (SI 1976 No. 2151 and Protocols). . According to JDB Oliver in the British version it originally referred to Ireland as the Republic of Ireland, while the Irish version simply said Ireland. However, in the 1998 Protocol no such problems existed, with specific reference by name to one country or the other and using the name Ireland. Oliver citing an Inland Revenue Press Release which states that “In line with practice following the Belfast Agreement, the term ‘Ireland’ is used in the Protocol whereas the term ‘Republic of Ireland’ was used in the 1976 Convention and previous Protocols.” During a subsequent debate in the House of Commons,on the draft Order, the change in wording was raised, with the Financial Secretary referring the Opposition spokesman to the Inland Revenue press release adding “the treaty thus reflects changing circumstances.”

In 1985 the British command papers described the Anglo-Irish Agreement as an "agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the government of the Republic of Ireland," with the Irish official papers described it as an "agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the government of Ireland." The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office referred to Ireland as the "Republic of Ireland" - however since 2000 it has referred to the State as "Ireland." The credentials presented by the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon, in 2003, were addressed to the President of Ireland.

Both the European Union and the United Nations, the term Ireland is used to refer to the Irish Republic. The President is know as the President of Ireland, the Government, as the Government of Ireland and Ambassadors, as Ambassadors of Ireland.

Today, the European Union note that the names of the Member States of the European Union must always be written and abbreviated according to the Interinstitutional Style Guide rules and that neither “Republic of Ireland” nor “Irish Republic” should be used when referring to the Irish State.