The Eire (Confirmation of Agreements) Act 1938 was an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...

passed on 17 May 1938. It was the British implementing measure for the 1938 Anglo-Irish Agreements which were signed at

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

on 25 April 1938 by the Governments of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

and the

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. There were three agreements in total: one to rescind Articles 6 and 7 of the

Anglo-Irish Treaty The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty ( ga , An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), commonly known in Ireland as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the ...

and the transfer of British Admiralty property to Ireland; a second for the settlement of outstanding financial claims against the Irish Government; and the third, an important trade agreement putting an end to an "economic war" between the two countries.

Implementation of the agreements

In accordance with the earlier agreements, the Act: * rescinded Articles 6 and 7 of the 1921 Treaty and returned certain British Admiralty property, commonly known as the Treaty Ports, to Ireland. * put into force a range of free trade provisions ending what had been an economic war between Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Name of the Irish state

The Act also gave partial recognition for the purposes of domestic British law to the change of the formal name of the Irish state under the 1937

Constitution of Ireland The Constitution of Ireland ( ga, Bunreacht na hÉireann, ) is the fundamental law of Ireland. It asserts the national sovereignty of the Irish people. The constitution, based on a system of representative democracy, is broadly within the traditi ...

; the Irish state had formerly been known as the "

Irish Free State The Irish Free State ( ga, Saorstát Éireann, , ; 6 December 192229 December 1937) was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between ...

". Under the Act the British Government decided to refer to the Irish state only as " Eire" (without the correct ''síneadh fada'' or

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...

), and not as "Ireland" (the state's name in English under the Constitution of Ireland). This avoided any need for the British government to refer to the Irish state as "Ireland", thus side-stepping concerns over the status of Northern Ireland. Under Section 1 of the Act, it was declared that (for the purposes of United Kingdom legislation) the territory "which was ... known as Irish Free State shall be styled as...Eire". The English-law name of the state was later changed to "Republic of Ireland" by the

Ireland Act 1949 The Ireland Act 1949 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom intended to deal with the consequences of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 as passed by the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas. Background Following the secession of most ...

Other effects

The Act came into effect on 19 May 1938 pursuant to a Treasury order. One of the Act's effects was to throw into doubt whether Irish citizens were still British subjects. Legal arguments were raised that as the Constitution of Ireland declared Ireland a sovereign independent state, the passing of the Act which recognised one of the Irish state’s constitutional names, also recognised its sovereignty. Notably, these arguments were raised in the ''Murray v Parkes'' case, 1942.Murray v Parkes, 1942.
concerning status of citizens of Ireland (or Eire) in UK law. See also
Caselaw Concerning Citizenship and the Eire (Confirmation of Agreements Act
in Annual Digest and Reports of International Law Cases, 1941 – 1942

Repeal

The Act was repealed (as having been spent) under Schedule 1, Part V of the

Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1981 The Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1981 (c 19) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This Act was partly in force in Great Britain at the end of 2010.The Chronological Table of the Statutes, 1235 - 2010. The Stationery Office. 2011. . ...

Notes

References

External links

British-Irish tripartite agreement on Trade, Finance and Defence, 1938

Anglo-Irish Treaty, 1921
{{UK legislation United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1938 British constitutional laws concerning Ireland Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations Politics of Ireland 1938 in Ireland Repealed United Kingdom Acts of Parliament Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning Ireland