Executive Powers (Consequential Provisions) Act

In December 1936 then President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State Eamon de Valera had ensured the passage of the Constitution (Amendment No. 27) Act which proported to abolish the office of governor-general. However he was advised by his Attorney-General, James Geoghegan, the Secretary to the Executive Council, Maurice Moynihan and Mr Matheson of the Parliamentary Draftsman's office that that Act did not actually abolish the office. They informed de Valera that removing the governor-generalship from the Irish Free State Constitution in itself did not abolish the office, as the office had an existence independent to the constitution in a number of sources, namely

• Letters Patent from the King constructing and regulating the office
• Orders-in-Council
• Statutory Instruments
• Statute law

and in other sources. To conclusively abolish the office, all mention of the governor-generalship would need to be removed from these and others also. In May 1937 de Valera introduced the Executive Powers (Consequential Provisions) Act, 1937 to do that.

The Act had three main aims:

1. to re-abolish the governor-generalship in those areas where the office had legally survived
2. to retrospectively sort out constitutional and legal problems that the removal of the office from the constitution in December 1936 had created, notably
• the illegal installation of the Chief Justice of the Irish Supreme Court, who had been legally required to make a declaration of office in front the governor-general, but did not do so as it was unclear as to whether there was still a governor-general, and so participated in a phoney 'installation' ceremony which de Valera wrongly claimed had been created in a recent Courts of Justice Act
• the illegal installation of three judges of the Supreme Court, all of whom made their declarations of office in front of an illegally-installed Chief Justice
• the illegal installation of a new Attorney-General, in breach of the requirement of the Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924 that only the governor-general could appoint him.
3. The granting of a pension to the 'former' governor-general, Domhnall Ua Buachalla.

The media and the opposition focused exclusively on the issue of the pension and failed to draw the public's attention to the fact that the new Bill was re-abolishing an office that de Valera had told them he had already abolished. By focusing on the pension (as he had hoped) the opposition failed to make capital out of one of de Valera's most dramatic and potentially humiliating mis-judgments, his first failed attempt to abolish the office of governor-general.

External links

• Text of act at Irish Statute Book