The Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 (No. 58 of 1936) was an Act of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament). The Act, which was signed into law on 12 December 1936, was one of two passed hurriedly in the aftermath of the Edward VIII abdication crisis to sharply reduce the role of the Crown. It is also sometimes referred to as the External Relations Act.
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👉 Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 in the context of The Republic of Ireland Act 1948
The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 (No. 22 of 1948) is an Act of the Oireachtas which declares that the description of Ireland is the Republic of Ireland, and vests in the president of Ireland the power to exercise the executive authority of the state in its external relations, on the advice of the Government of Ireland. The Act was signed into law on 21 December 1948 and came into force on 18 April 1949, Easter Monday, the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Easter Rising.
The Act ended the remaining statutory role of the British monarchy in relation to Ireland, by repealing the 1936 External Relations Act, which had vested in George VI, in his capacity as a symbol of the cooperation of the nations that were members of the Commonwealth with which Ireland associated itself, and his successors those functions which the Act now transferred to the President.
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Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 in the context of Irish head of state from 1922 to 1949
The state known today as Ireland is the successor state to the Irish Free State, which existed from December 1922 to December 1937. At its foundation, the Irish Free State was, in accordance with its constitution and the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, governed as a constitutional monarchy in the British Commonwealth with the British monarch as head of state. The monarch was represented in the Irish Free State by the governor-general, who performed most of the monarch's duties based on the advice of elected Irish officials.
The Statute of Westminster, passed in 1931, granted expanded sovereignty to the dominions of the British Commonwealth, and permitted the Irish state to amend its constitution and legislate outside the terms of the Treaty. The Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936, enacted in response to the abdication of Edward VIII, removed the role of the monarch for all internal purposes, leaving him only a few formal duties in foreign relations as a "symbol of cooperation" with other Commonwealth nations. The Constitution of Ireland, which took effect in December 1937, established the position of president of Ireland, with the office first filled in June 1938, but the monarch retained his role in foreign affairs, leaving open the question of which of the two figures was the formal head of state. The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 ended the statutory position of the British monarch for external purposes and assigned those duties to the president, taking effect in April 1949, from which point Ireland was inarguably a republic.