![Ireland-Emergency Powers Order 1939](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ireland-Emergency_Powers_Order_1939.jpeg)
The Emergency Powers Act 1939 (EPA) was an Act of the
Oireachtas
The Oireachtas (, ), sometimes referred to as Oireachtas Éireann, is the Bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The Oireachtas consists of:
*The President of Ireland
*The bicameralism, two houses of the Oireachtas ...
(Irish parliament) enacted on 3 September 1939, after an official
state of emergency
A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to be able to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state du ...
had been declared on 2 September 1939 in response to the outbreak of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The Act empowered the government to:
The EPA lapsed on 2 September 1946. The state of emergency itself was not rescinded until 1 September 1976.
Enactment
As enacted in 1937, The
Constitution of Ireland
The Constitution of Ireland ( ga, Bunreacht na hÉireann, ) is the constitution, fundamental law of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It asserts the national sovereignty of the Irish people. The constitution, based on a system of representative democra ...
stated (Article 28.3.3°):
The Constitution also provided that, during a "war or armed rebellion",
military tribunal
Military justice (also military law) is the legal system (bodies of law and procedure) that governs the conduct of the active-duty personnel of the armed forces of a country. In some nation-states, civil law and military law are distinct bodie ...
s may try civilians, and the
Defence Forces The phrase Defence Force(s) (or Defense Force(s) in US English - see spelling differences) is in the title of the armed forces of certain countries and territories.
Defence forces
* Ambazonia Defence Forces
*Artsakh Defence Army
* Australian Defen ...
are not bound by ''
habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
''.
The
Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement
The Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement was signed on 25 April 1938 by Ireland and the United Kingdom. It aimed to resolve the Anglo-Irish Trade War which had been on-going from 1933.
Scope
The prime minister Neville Chamberlain summarised the 4 possibl ...
of 25 April 1938 was motivated in part by a desire by both countries to remove the distractions of the
Anglo-Irish Trade War
The Anglo-Irish Trade War (also called the Economic War) was a retaliatory trade war between the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1938. The Irish government refused to continue reimbursing Britain with land annuities from fi ...
to preparations for an expected European war. After the agreement the British government shared details of the emergency laws it was preparing. The
Sudetenland
The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...
crisis prompted the adapting of the British "war book" for Ireland's purposes; draft legislation was already finished by 18 September 1938.
The
First Amendment of the Constitution of 1939 allows an emergency to be declared during wars in which the state is a
non-belligerent
A non-belligerent is a person, a state, or other organization that does not fight in a given conflict. The term is often used to describe a country that does not take part militarily in a war.
A non-belligerent state differs from a neutral one i ...
, subject to
resolution
Resolution(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate
* Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body
* New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual mak ...
s by the houses of the Oireachtas. This was rushed through the Oireachtas on 2 September 1939, the day after the
German invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
, because
the state would remain neutral in the ensuing war. Immediately after the constitutional amendment was passed, the required emergency resolution was passed, in turn enabling the passage of the EPA in the early hours of 3 September. WWII itself was never referred to officially in Ireland as "
The Emergency" as is often claimed but this is a myth that grew out of the emergency powers act.
Powers
The Act gave the government the ability to maintain Irish neutrality during "the Emergency" by providing it with sweeping new powers for the duration of the emergency situation; these included
internment
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
, censorship of the media,
postal censorship
Postal censorship is the inspection or examination of mail, most often by governments. It can include opening, reading and total or selective obliteration of letters and their contents, as well as covers, postcards, parcels and other postal pa ...
, and additional government control of the economy. The powers given to the government by the EPA were exercised by
statutory order
In many countries, a statutory instrument is a form of delegated legislation.
United Kingdom
Statutory instruments are the principal form of delegated or secondary legislation in the United Kingdom.
National government
Statutory instrument ...
s termed Emergency Powers Orders (EPOs) made by ministers. During the
Dáil debate on the Emergency Powers Bill,
Fine Gael
Fine Gael (, ; English: "Family (or Tribe) of the Irish") is a liberal-conservative and Christian-democratic political party in Ireland. Fine Gael is currently the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland in terms of members of Dáil à ...
TD John A. Costello was highly critical of the proposed increase of powers, stating that
According to
Tony Gray, the EPOs "were so draconian that they effectively abolished democracy for the period, and most aspects of the life of the country were controlled by the dictatorial powers the government acquired". The
Garda SÃochána
(; meaning "the Guardian(s) of the Peace"), more commonly referred to as the Gardaà (; "Guardians") or "the Guards", is the national police service of Ireland. The service is headed by the Garda Commissioner who is appointed by the Irish Gover ...
received extended powers of search and arrest. Compulsory cultivation of land and compulsory queuing for buses were a few topics for which EPOs were made. One aspect of the EPOs was that, once they were laid before the Oireachtas, TDs could only annul or accept an EPO; they could not scrutinise or amend them as they could with legislation.
John A. Costello condemned the fact that EPOs could be
judicially noticed in court without being introduced as
evidence
Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field.
In epistemology, evidenc ...
.
Media censorship of radio broadcasts was effected by having news bulletins read to the head of the Government Information Bureau for approval before being broadcast by
Radio Éireann
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
. Weather forecasts were forbidden; this inconvenienced farmers and fishermen.
In 1946,
Frank Aiken
Francis Thomas Aiken (13 February 1898 – 18 May 1983) was an Irish revolutionary and politician. He was chief of staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA at the end of the Irish Civil War. Aiken later served as Tánaiste from 1965 to 1969 and Minister fo ...
told the Dáil that a total of 7,864 orders had been made.
Of these, 522 were made directly under the EPA, and the rest were subsidiary orders made under one of the primary orders, including about 5,330 under the
Wages Standstill Orders.
The total excluded orders made by
local authorities
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...
for
compulsory purchase
Compulsion may refer to:
* Compulsive behavior, a psychological condition in which a person does a behavior compulsively, having an overwhelming feeling that they must do so.
* Obsessive–compulsive disorder, a mental disorder characterized by i ...
of land for
turf production and
allotments, which Aiken said would take too much effort to enumerate.
Amendment and expiry
The EPA originally specified a duration of one year. Amending acts, passed annually, continued the principal act until 2 September 1946, when it was allowed to lapse. There were also substantive amendments to the act's provisions; those of 1940 and 1942 increased the emergency powers, while that passed in 1945, as the war was ending, reduced them. The first 1940 amendment extended the power of internment from foreign nationals to Irish citizens, and the second 1940 amendment allowed juryless
court martial
A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
of civilians. These were in response to
increased activity by the Irish Republican Army (IRA); many IRA members were interned, and five were executed by firing squad after courts martial.
Media censorship prevented much public backlash at this.
Under the 1941
Second Amendment of the Constitution, an emergency ends, not automatically when the war does, but only by Oireachtas resolutions. The EPA finally lapsed on 2 September 1946.
However, the state of emergency itself was not rescinded until 1 September 1976.
Continued orders
The EPA's final year in operation began with
Japan's surrender
The surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, bringing the war's hostilities to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy ...
, and most EPOs were explicitly revoked before the act itself expired.
The remaining orders would automatically expire when the act did.
The
then government wanted to keep many in force, mostly concerning economic and financial matters.
These EPOs had been passed under the EPA, not because the powers they granted were otherwise unconstitutional, but because they would otherwise have required
primary legislation
Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislature, legislative and executive (government), executive branches of ...
, which is much slower to pass than
secondary legislation
Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislative and executive branches of governments in representative democra ...
. Several acts passed before the EPA expired kept these EPOs in force even after the EPA's expiry. The
Law Reform Commission
A law commission, law reform commission, or law revision commission is an independent body set up by a government to conduct law reform; that is, to consider the state of laws in a jurisdiction and make recommendations or proposals for legal chang ...
(LRC) in 2015 noted that most of these EPOs are not listed in the
electronic Irish Statute Book and should be explicitly revoked "as a matter of good practice".
Some of them are accessible via the
Oireachtas
The Oireachtas (, ), sometimes referred to as Oireachtas Éireann, is the Bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The Oireachtas consists of:
*The President of Ireland
*The bicameralism, two houses of the Oireachtas ...
library's
online public access catalogue
The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with ''library catalog'', is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card catalogs previously u ...
.
;Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946: the main continuance act, in relation to production, trade, and labour cartels.
The act stated that all EPOs not already revoked would remain in force. An explanatory memorandum for the bill listed, across 24 pages, the EPOs which it was proposed to include. The 1946 act was continued annually by further acts until 31 December 1957.
Rationing
Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resources being distributed on a particular ...
continued until 1951.
;Turf Development Act, 1946: retained EPO 92 relating to turf.
;Continuation of Compensation Schemes Act, 1946: EPOs relating to compensation for war injuries and damage
Many of these EPOs were gradually revoked, according as standard primary legislation (acts of the Oireachtas) were passed in subsequent years with equivalent provisions. For example:
;Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946:
EPO 362, which penalised deserters from the Defence Forces.
;Merchant Shipping Act, 1947: EPO 2, which prescribed the
Irish tricolour
The national flag of Ireland ( ga, bratach na hÉireann), frequently referred to in Ireland as 'the tricolour' () and elsewhere as the Irish tricolour is a vertical tricolour of green (at the hoist), white and orange. The proportions of the ...
instead of the
Red Ensign as the
civil ensign
A civil ensign is an ensign (maritime flag) used by civilian vessels to denote their nationality. It can be the same or different from the state ensign and the naval ensign (or war ensign). It is also known as the merchant ensign or merchant flag. ...
;Irish Shipping Limited Act, 1947: EPOs establishing
Irish Shipping
Irish Shipping Limited was an Irish state-owned deep sea shipping company, formed during World War II for the purpose of supplying the country's import needs. Its ships were usually named after trees. Its contribution to Irish neutrality was re ...
;Customs (Temporary Provisions) Act 1945: EPO 52 relating to smuggling
;Rent Restrictions Act, 1946: EPO 313
;Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act, 1947: EPO 382
;National Health Insurance Act, 1947: EPO 381, relating to
British Armed Forces
The British Armed Forces, also known as His Majesty's Armed Forces, are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, s ...
pensioners
;Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1957: EPO 108, 109, and 351, for distributing food and fuel to the poor.
;Superannuation Act, 1946: EPO 354
An exception which remains unrepealed is the Continuation of Compensation Schemes Act 1946. Compensation schemes originating with EPOs continued by this act were amended by statutory instruments (SIs) as late as 1979,
and in 2011 the powers it grants were formally transferred from the
Minister for Finance
A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation.
A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", ...
to the new
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform ( ga, An tAire Caiteachais Phoiblà agus Athchóirithe) is a senior minister in the Government of Ireland and leads the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
The current Minister for Public ...
.
The LRC in 2016 advised repealing the act and all its EPOs and SIs as obsolete.
See also
*
Irish neutrality during World War II
The policy of Irish neutrality during World War II was adopted by the Oireachtas at the instigation of the Taoiseach Éamon de Valera upon the outbreak of World War II in Europe. It was maintained throughout the conflict, in spite of several ...
*
List of Acts of the Oireachtas
This is a list of Acts of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) for the years 1922 to present.
;Notes
In the lists below, unless otherwise stated, all Acts are public Acts.
Prior to 2003, the short title of legislation included a comma before the y ...
Footnotes
References
Sources
*
*
* Oireachtas proceedings, 2 September 1939
Dáilan
Seanad(includes all stages of constitutional amendment bill and Emergency Powers Bill, and emergency resolution)
Citations
{{Reflist
External links
Irish Statute Book
Emergency Powers Bill 1939 (Bill 26 of 1939)Oireachtas
beta
Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bÄ“Ì‚ta or ell, βήτα, vÃta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
website
1939 in Irish law
Acts of the Oireachtas of the 1930s
Emergency laws in the Republic of Ireland
Independent Ireland in World War II