Domhnall Ua Buachalla - Ordered To Keep A Low Profile

Ordered To Keep A Low Profile

De Valera explicitly instructed Ua Buachalla as governor-general to keep a low public profile, and not to fulfil any public engagements. This was part of de Valera's policy to make the governor-generalship an irrelevance by reducing it to invisibility. While he continued to give the Royal Assent to legislation, summon and dissolve Dáil Éireann and fulfil the other formal duties of the governor-generalship, he declined all public invitations and kept himself invisible, as advised by "his" Government. In fact in his period in office he performed only one public function: the receipt of the credentials of the French Ambassador in the Council Chamber, Government Buildings, 1933, on behalf of the King, George V. However, de Valera subsequently had that duty moved from the Governor-General to his own post of President of the Executive Council. (One of the few other occasions Ua Buachalla was mentioned at all in public was when, in the aftermath of the death of King George V in January 1936, he had to reply to messages of condolence sent to the Irish people by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull.)

On de Valera's instruction, Ua Buachalla did not reside in the official residence of the Governor-General, the Viceregal Lodge (now called Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of the President of Ireland). Instead a house was rented for his use. The official English title "Governor-General" was largely replaced by the official Irish title "Seanascal" or its direct translation Seneschal; however, "Governor-General" remained the legal form used in official English-language documents and proclamations.