Irish Head of State From 1936 To 1949 - Debate

Debate

Until the Republic of Ireland Act came into force in April 1949, the President of Ireland had no international role. Nonetheless from 1936 until 1949 the role of the King in the Irish state was invisible to most Irish people. The monarch never visited the state during that period and, due to the abolition of the office of Governor-General, had no official representative there. The president, on the other hand, played a key role in important public ceremonies. Due to his role in foreign relations, however, almost every state with which the state had diplomatic relations concluded that it was the King who was head of state.

Asked to explain the country's status in 1945, de Valera insisted that it was a republic. He told the Dáil that:

The State ... is ... demonstrably a republic. Let us look up any standard text on political theory ... and judge whether our State does not possess every characteristic mark by which a republic can be distinguished or recognised. We are a democracy with the ultimate sovereign power resting with the people—a representative democracy with the various organs of State functioning under a written Constitution, with the executive authority controlled by Parliament, with an independent judiciary functioning under the Constitution and the law, and with a Head of State directly elected by the people for a definite term of office.

Referring to the External Relations Act he insisted that:

We are an independent republic, associated as a matter of our external policy with the States of the British Commonwealth.

Despite de Valera's views, many political scholars consider representing a nation abroad to be the key defining role of a head of state. This view was echoed by the Taoiseach John A. Costello in a debate in Seanad Éireann (the Irish Senate) in December 1948, when he argued that the Republic of Ireland Bill he was introducing would make the President of Ireland the Irish head of state, the man who "ought to have been" but wasn't. Despite this conflict, de Valera's party, as the main opposition in the Dáil at the time, decided not to oppose Costello's bill.

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