72 years ago today, on Easter Monday 18 April 1949, The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 came into force and Ireland became a Republic.

72 years ago today, on Easter Monday 18 April 1949, the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Easter Rising, The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 came into force, Ireland became a Republic, left the British Commonwealth & ended the last remaining statutory role of the British monarchy in affairs of the Irish State.

On the day the Act came into force, 18 April 1949, the British King George VI sent the following message to the President of Ireland, Seán T. O'Kelly:

“I send you my sincere good wishes on this day, being well aware of the neighbourly links which hold the people of the Republic of Ireland in close association with my subjects of the United Kingdom. I hold in most grateful memory the services and sacrifices of the men and women of your country who rendered gallant assistance to our cause in the recent war and who made a notable contribution to our victories. I pray that every blessing may be with you today and in the future.

— GEORGE R.”

The bill to declare Ireland a republic was introduced in 1948 by the new Taoiseach, John A. Costello of the Fine Gael party. Costello made the announcement that the bill was to be introduced when he was in Ottawa, during an official visit to Canada.

David McCullagh (PhD, Prime Time presenter, historian and author of “The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello”) suggested that it was a spur of the moment reaction to offence caused by the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Alexander, who was of Northern Irish descent. Lord Alexander was a famous, if rather inept, British General who had accumulated considerable undeserved honours during the Second World War. He was also closely related to Ulster Unionism – and shortly before had been made a Freeman of the city of Londonderry. As a memento, he was presented with a silver replica of Roaring Meg, a canon used in the defence of the city against Jacobites in 1689. At the State dinner for Costello, this was the centre piece for the table – as was apparently standard practice at the time. While Costello didn’t say anything, for fear of offending Canadian Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, who was sitting beside him, he was furious. He was also annoyed by the failure to offer a toast to the President of Ireland, and by Alexander’s manner, which he thought was rude.

A prior agreement that there would be separate toasts for the King and for the President of Ireland was broken. The Irish position was that a toast to the King, instead of representing both countries, would not include Ireland. 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. 

According to all but one of the ministers in Costello's cabinet, the decision to declare a republic had already been made before Costello's Canadian visit. Costello's revelation of the decision was because the Sunday Independent newspaper had discovered the fact and was about to "break" the story as an exclusive. 

Nevertheless one minister, Noel Browne, 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. 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 (of which no record existed).

The Costello government had refused to allow the then Secretary to the Government, Maurice Moynihan, to attend cabinet meetings and take minutes, because they believed he was too close to the opposition leader, éamon de Valera. Rather than Moynihan taking minutes, the job was entrusted it to a then Parliamentary Secretary (junior minister), Liam Cosgrave, himself later Taoiseach. Given that Cosgrave had never kept minutes before, his minutes, at least early on in the government, proved to be only a very limited record of government decisions.