| Revision as of 17:39, 28 November 2007 editRannpháirtí anaithnid (old) (talk | contribs)6,688 edits copy edit← Previous edit | Revision as of 18:08, 28 November 2007 edit undoJnestorius (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers77,725 edits →From Éire to the Republic of Ireland: section removed to ÉireNext edit → | ||
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| == ''Éire'' in the Irish Constitution == | == ''Éire'' in the Irish Constitution == | ||
| From 1922 the ] of the ] had used the word "Éire" as well the official form "Saorstat Éireann". In 1937 the ] party government (1932–48) of ] drafted an entirely new constitution, called '']''. The constitution is not an act of the parliament of the Irish Free State but was "enacted by the people", by a ] in 1937. The simple terms, Ireland and Éire, were used in the constitution to indicate a break with the Irish Free State without implying a return to the ] or a break with the Crown. ] was described as the "first official language". Among the new features of that new constitution were a ], renaming the ] the ], and restoring the senate ]. As it was the religion of over 95% of the population, there was a reference (repealed by plebiscite in 1972) to the "special position of the Roman Catholic church". Unlike the Irish Free State constitution which it replaced, Bunreacht na hÉireann had no constitutional link with the Crown, except in external relations through a combination of Article 29 of the Constitution and the '']''. The repeal of the latter Act by the '']'' created Ireland as a sovereign Republic in 1949, with ''Republic of Ireland'' as a new description but without changing the name of the state from ''Éire'' or ''Ireland''. | From 1922 the ] of the ] had used the word "Éire" as well the official form "Saorstat Éireann". In 1937 the ] party government (1932–48) of ] drafted an entirely new constitution, called '']''. The constitution is not an act of the parliament of the Irish Free State but was "enacted by the people", by a ] in 1937. The simple terms, Ireland and Éire, were used in the constitution to indicate a break with the Irish Free State without implying a return to the ] or a break with the Crown. ] was described as the "first official language". Among the new features of that new constitution were a ], renaming the ] the ], and restoring the senate ]. As it was the religion of over 95% of the population, there was a reference (repealed by plebiscite in 1972) to the "special position of the Roman Catholic church". Unlike the Irish Free State constitution which it replaced, Bunreacht na hÉireann had no constitutional link with the Crown, except in external relations through a combination of Article 29 of the Constitution and the '']''. The repeal of the latter Act by the '']'' created Ireland as a sovereign Republic in 1949, with ''Republic of Ireland'' as a new description but without changing the name of the state from ''Éire'' or ''Ireland''. | ||
| == From Éire to the Republic of Ireland == | |||
| The declaration of the republic proved somewhat controversial. In 1945, when asked if he planned to do so, de Valera had replied, "we are a republic",<ref>"" Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas. Retrieved on ], ].</ref> 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, ] who had been proclaimed '']'' 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 ] 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, ], Secretary to the Executive Council (i.e., the state's main civil servant and his own closest advisor), ], 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 ''], 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 ], 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 Éire was ''already'' a republic. In the end, the draft bill was never submitted to the ] 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. | |||
| ]s.]] | ]s.]] | ||
| A bill to finally and unambiguously declare a republic was introduced in 1948 by the new Taoiseach, ] of the ] 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 ], during an official visit to ]. It had been suggested that it was a spur of the moment reaction to offence caused by the ], ] who was of ] descent and who allegedly placed symbols of Northern Ireland, notably a replica of the famous ] cannon used in the ], before an affronted Costello at a ]. 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 ] (an Irish newspaper) had discovered the fact and was about to "break" the story as an exclusive. Nevertheless one minister, the controversial ], 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, ], 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 ]. 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 ] 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.<ref>By the 1980s, both men's personal relationship had broken down completely. Browne saw MacBride, who had been his party leader at the time, as egotistical and manipulative, holding him personally responsible for his dismissal from cabinet. (It was MacBride who had demanded and got Browne's resignation over the ] fiasco.) MacBride saw Browne as a deliberately provocative trouble-maker who, in his book ''Against the Tide'', had told lies including a series of characterisations of his cabinet colleagues that were generally seen as gross and offensive distortions. (One character mocked, ] ], was attacked for his affinity for sugar and desserts, his eating habits compared to those of a pig. Browne, himself a medical doctor, never mentioned in the book that Norton was subsequently diagnosed as a ], which would have explained his dietary habits.) Thus the MacBride/Browne clash over Browne's book and its claims about the declaration of the republic was seen not as discussion of the topic but of both settling old scores with a long-term bitter enemy.</ref> | |||
| At any rate, the '']'' was enacted in Oireachtas Éireann 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 Éire was ''already'' a republic. Speaking in ] 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. | |||
| On ] ], the ''Republic of Ireland Act, 1948'' came into force.<ref>"". uniset.ca. Retrieved on ], ].</ref> Ireland ceased to have a king. The President of Ireland was upgraded to a full head of state. While the constitutional name of the state, ''Éire'' was not changed, the descriptive name given to Éire in the new Act, ''The Republic of Ireland'', became the effective name of the twenty-six county state.<ref>"". Irish Statute Book Database. Retrieved on ], ].</ref> All previous ambiguities over name, title, head of state and the positions of the King of Ireland and the President of Ireland were resolved. The ] passed its own '']'' acknowledging the changes, preserving certain rights of Irish citizens in the ], and designating ''the Republic of Ireland'' as its name for the resulting state. King George VI, sent a message of goodwill to the new Irish head of state, President ]. O'Kelly's new status as head of state was celebrated by the first ever state visit by an Irish president abroad, to the ] 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.) | |||
| The declaration of the republic had two controversial after-effects. On becoming a republic, a country ceases to be a member of the ]. Though 1949 saw India as a republic reapply for membership and be accepted, the Republic of Ireland decided not to do so.<ref>The issue of whether Ireland should rejoin the Commonwealth is occasionally raised. One of ]'s ministers, ], suggested the ] should rejoin in the 1960s. The suggestion, previously approved by Lemass who wanted to see the reaction, drew a negative response and was quietly dropped. In the 1990s, ] then a junior minister (now a full cabinet minister), and coincidentally a grandson of Éamon de Valera, unilaterally suggested the Republic of Ireland should reapply for membership. The suggestion drew little hostility but no great enthusiasm. Ó Cuív has continued to raise the issue occasionally.</ref> More controversially, the British parliament's ''Ireland Act 1949'' gave a legislative guarantee to ] 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 "] veto" became a source of much controversy in Dublin until 1998. | |||
| == European Union == | == European Union == | ||
Revision as of 18:08, 28 November 2007
This article is about the Irish-language name of the island called Ireland and state called Republic of Ireland. For the state, see Republic of Ireland. For other uses of Ireland, see Ireland (disambiguation). Eire is a common misspelling for Erie, a city in Pennsylvania.
Éire (IPA: [ˈeːrʲə] pronunciation) is the Irish (Gaeilge) name of the island called Ireland in the English language. Éire is the nominative form in modern Irish of the name for the goddess called Ériu in Old Irish, a mythical figure who helped the Gaels conquer Ireland as described in the Book of Invasions. Éire is still used in the Irish language today to refer to the island of Ireland as well as the Republic of Ireland - as well as the goddess. The dative form Éirinn is anglicized as Erin, which is occasionally used as a poetic name for Ireland in English, and has also become a common feminine name in English. The name "Éire" features on all Irish coinage (and Irish euro coins), postage stamps, passports and other official state documents issued since 1937 — for instance the Official Seal of the President of Ireland. Before then, "Saorstát Éireann", the Irish translation of Irish Free State, was used except for postage stamps which regularly used "Éire" during the Irish Free State era in both definitive and special issues.
The name was given in Article 4 of the 1937 Irish constitution to the Irish state, created under the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which was known between 1922 and 1937 as the Irish Free State. Article 4 stated that: "The name of the state is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland." Article 8 states that Irish is the first official language. Since 1949, the term Republic of Ireland has generally been used in preference to Éire, when speaking English. Technically, as the Republic of Ireland Act enacted in 1948 makes clear that the "Republic of Ireland" is actually a description rather than the name of the state, even if generally used as such. The Constitution of Ireland makes clear that the name of the state in the English Language is "Ireland".
From January 2007, the Irish government nameplates at meetings of the European Union have borne both Éire and Ireland following the adoption of Irish as a working language of the European Union.
Etymology
Further information: Ériu, Erin, Hibernia, and IverniÉire is the modern Irish form of Old Irish Ériu. Comparison with ancient transcriptions of the name of the island of Ireland, and forms known from other Celtic languages, yields the Common Celtic reconstruction *φīwerjō, stem *φīwerjon-. The Celtic form implies Proto-Indo-European *piHwerjon-, likely related to the adjectival stem *piHwer- "fat" (cf. Sanskrit pīvan, f. pīvarī and by-form pīvara, "fat, full, abounding") hence meaning "fat land" or "land of abundance".
From the later Q-Celtic form *īwerjon-, in which the original p of the stem had been dropped (cf. *pater > athair "father"), was borrowed the Welsh Iwerddon "Ireland". From a similar or somewhat later form were also borrowed Greek Template:Polytonic Iernē and Template:Polytonic Iouernia; the latter form was converted into Latin Hibernia. Old Irish Ériu is directly descended from *φīwerjō > Q-Celtic *īweriū; from it was borrowed Old English Íras "men of Ireland", whence Íraland "land of the Íras, Ireland".
Older explanations for the etymology of Éire, no longer considered linguistically plausible, are:
- Derived from a root word Ara (also spelt Arya, Aire or Aera) meaning noble, as in 'Aryan'. Among the very many poetic names for the island of Ireland was Mág Ealga meaning plain of the nobles.
- Ar or Ir in the Irish language also meant land, and according to old manuscripts was the name given to the lands of the mythological Celtic tribe of Gael Glas who travelled from Scythia across Greece and eventually to Ireland.
Éire in the Irish Constitution
From 1922 the postage stamps of the Irish Free State had used the word "Éire" as well the official form "Saorstat Éireann". In 1937 the Fianna Fáil party government (1932–48) of Éamon de Valera drafted an entirely new constitution, called Bunreacht na hÉireann. The constitution is not an act of the parliament of the Irish Free State but was "enacted by the people", by a plebiscite in 1937. The simple terms, Ireland and Éire, were used in the constitution to indicate a break with the Irish Free State without implying a return to the Irish Republic or a break with the Crown. Irish was described as the "first official language". Among the new features of that new constitution were a President of Ireland, renaming the President of the Executive Council the Taoiseach, and restoring the senate Seanad Éireann. As it was the religion of over 95% of the population, there was a reference (repealed by plebiscite in 1972) to the "special position of the Roman Catholic church". Unlike the Irish Free State constitution which it replaced, Bunreacht na hÉireann had no constitutional link with the Crown, except in external relations through a combination of Article 29 of the Constitution and the External Relations Act 1936. The repeal of the latter Act by the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 created Ireland as a sovereign Republic in 1949, with Republic of Ireland as a new description but without changing the name of the state from Éire or Ireland.
European Union
In 2006 it was announced that the Republic of Ireland would use nameplates bearing Éire and Ireland at European Union meetings from 2007. This change was made at the same time as the adoption of Irish as a working language of the European Union as of 1 January 2007.
Footnotes
- "Bunreacht Na Éireann". Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas. Retrieved on 14 March, 2007
- Article 4, Bunreacht na hÉireann (Constitution of Ireland): "The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland."
- Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams, ed. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub., 1997, p. 194
- Higgins critical of plan for 'Éire Ireland' plates, Gaelport, 29 June 2006
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.
| Irish states since 1171 | |
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| Republic of Ireland (from 1937) and Northern Ireland (from 1922) | |
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| Declared states |
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