Oath of Allegiance (Ireland) - de Valera and Abolition

De Valera and Abolition

When de Valera founded Fianna Fáil as the party of an "Irish Republic" in 1926, he and his party, though agreeing to contest elections, refused to take the Oath. However the assassination of the Vice-President of the Executive Council, Kevin O'Higgins, led the Cumann na nGaedheal government under W. T. Cosgrave to introduce a law requiring all Dáil candidates to promise that they would take the Oath. Otherwise they could not contest the election. Backed into a corner, de Valera took the Oath, declaring that he was simply signing a piece of paper to be admitted to the Dáil. In power from 1932, de Valera amended the Free State's constitution, firstly to allow him to introduce any constitutional amendments irrespective of whether they clashed with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, then amended the constitution to remove Article 17 of the constitution which required the taking of the Oath. It was the political descendants of Michael Collins, the Fine Gael - pro-treaty party in a coalition with an anti-treaty party, not de Valera of the Fianna Fáil - who did declare the state to be a republic in 1948.