Republic of Ireland
Ireland known as the Republic of Ireland, is a country in north-western Europe occupying 26 of 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, located on the eastern part of the island, whose metropolitan area is home to around a third of the country's over 4.8 million inhabitants. The sovereign state shares its only land border with a part of the United Kingdom, it is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, the Irish Sea to the east. It is a parliamentary republic; the legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann, an upper house, Seanad Éireann, an elected President who serves as the ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach, elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the state was created as the Irish Free State in 1922 as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It had the status of Dominion until 1937 when a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and became a republic, with an elected non-executive president as head of state.
It was declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955, it joined the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union, in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the twentieth century, but during the 1980s and 1990s the British and Irish governments worked with the Northern Ireland parties towards a resolution to "the Troubles". Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Ireland Executive have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North-South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement. Ireland ranks among the top twenty-five wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, as the tenth most prosperous country in the world according to The Legatum Prosperity Index 2015. After joining the EEC, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth.
The country achieved considerable prosperity between the years of 1995 and 2007, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period. This was halted by an unprecedented financial crisis that began in 2008, in conjunction with the concurrent global economic crash. However, as the Irish economy was the fastest growing in the EU in 2015, Ireland is again ascending league tables comparing wealth and prosperity internationally. For example, in 2015, Ireland was ranked as the joint sixth most developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index, it performs well in several national performance metrics, including freedom of the press, economic freedom and civil liberties. Ireland is a member of the European Union and is a founding member of the Council of Europe and the OECD; the Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since prior to World War II and the country is not a member of NATO, although it is a member of Partnership for Peace. The 1922 state, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was "styled and known as the Irish Free State".
The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, provides that "the name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland". Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland." The 1948 Act does not name the state as "Republic of Ireland", because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution. The government of the United Kingdom used the name "Eire" and, from 1949, "Republic of Ireland", for the state; as well as "Ireland", "Éire" or "the Republic of Ireland", the state is referred to as "the Republic", "Southern Ireland" or "the South". In an Irish republican context it is referred to as "the Free State" or "the 26 Counties". From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island's population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated to the United States.
This set the pattern of emigration for the century to come, resulting in constant population decline up to the 1960s. From 1874, under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence; this was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to "grass-roots" control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act 1898, in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy. Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act in 1914. However, the Unionist movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics achieved real political power
Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border
The Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, sometimes referred to as the Irish border, runs for 499 km from Lough Foyle in the north of Ireland to Carlingford Lough in the northeast, separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland. Border markings are inconspicuous, in common with many inter-state borders in the European Union; as both states share a Common Travel Area and are part of the European Single Market, the border is an open one, allowing free passage of people since 1923 and of goods since 1993. There are 270 public roads that cross the border. Following the Brexit vote, the future of the border is uncertain and its status is one of the key points in the UK withdrawal negotiations. Intended as an internal boundary within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the border was created in 1921 under the United Kingdom Parliament's Government of Ireland Act 1920. Prior to this, a separatist Irish parliament had been established in Dublin, which did not recognise the Government of Ireland Act, was engaged in the Irish War of Independence.
The Act was intended to deliver Home Rule in Ireland, with separate parliaments for Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. Six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland were assigned to Northern Ireland, the rest of Ireland comprising 26 counties to Southern Ireland; the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was repealed in the UK by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as a result of the Good Friday Agreement and in Ireland by the Statute Law Revision Act 2007. The conclusion of the Irish War of Independence, the subsequent signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, led to the creation of the Irish Free State – a dominion established for the whole island of Ireland on 6 December 1922; the border became an international frontier after the Parliament of Northern Ireland exercised its right to opt out of the Free State on 7 December 1922. The partition of 1921 created only a provisional boundary; the manner in which the Boundary Commission clause was drafted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty was only explicit in its ambiguity.
Amongst politicians in Southern Ireland, there was remarkably little attention paid to the clause during the debates on the Treaty. The Republican activist Sean MacEntee was a "lone voice" in warning that the commission would involve an exercise "in transferring from the jurisdiction of the Government of Northern Ireland certain people and certain districts which that Government cannot govern; the border agreement was lodged with the League of Nations on 8 February 1926, making it a matter of international law. The Boundary Commission's report was superseded by events and so it was not published until 1969; the Irish Free State was renamed Ireland by the 1937 constitution, the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 formally declared that the state was a republic with the official description Republic of Ireland while not changing its name, which remains Ireland. Customs controls were introduced on the frontier on 1 April 1923, shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State; these controls were maintained, with varying degrees of severity, until 1 January 1993, when systematic customs checks were abolished between European Community member states as part of the single market.
There are no longer any operational customs posts along either side of the border. Except during a brief period during World War II, it has never been necessary for Irish or British citizens to produce a passport to cross the border; however during the 1970s troubles, security forces asked travellers for identification. During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, there were British military checkpoints on main border crossings and UK security forces made the remaining crossings impassable. By about 2005, in phase with implementation of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, remaining controls were definitively removed. In October 2007, details began to emerge of a British Government plan that might end the Common Travel Area encompassing the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2009 creating an anomalous position for Northern Ireland in the process. In a statement to Dáil Éireann, the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern assured the House that "British authorities have no plans whatsoever to introduce any controls on the land border between North and South.
I want to make that clear. All they are looking at is increased cross-border cooperation, targeting illegal immigrants." This raised concerns north of the border. Jim Allister, a former member of the Democratic Unionist Party and a Member of the European Parliament, told The Times that it would be "intolerable and preposterous if citizens of the UK had to present a passport to enter another part of the UK". In July 2008, the UK and Irish governments announced their intent to resume controls over their common border and the Common Travel Area in general; each proposed to introduce detailed passport control over travellers from the other state, where travel is by air or sea. However, the land border will be'lightly contro
World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was engaged in the First World War, it was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798, the first armed action of the Irish revolutionary period. Organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, lasted for six days. Members of the Irish Volunteers—led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 women of Cumann na mBan—seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic; the British Army brought in thousands of reinforcements as well as artillery and a gunboat. There was fierce street fighting on the routes into the city centre, where the rebels put up stiff resistance, slowing the British advance and inflicting heavy casualties.
Elsewhere in Dublin, the fighting consisted of sniping and long-range gun battles. The main rebel positions were surrounded and bombarded with artillery. There were isolated actions in other parts of Ireland, with attacks on the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks at Ashbourne, County Meath, County Cork and in County Galway, the seizure of the town of Enniscorthy, County Wexford. Germany had sent a shipment of arms to the rebels, but the British had intercepted it just before the Rising began. Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill had issued a countermand in a bid to halt the Rising, which reduced the number of rebels who mobilised. With much greater numbers and heavier weapons, the British Army suppressed the Rising. Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29 April, although sporadic fighting continued until Sunday, when word reached the other rebel positions. After the surrender the country remained under martial law. About 3,500 people were taken prisoner by the British, many of whom had played no part in the Rising, 1,800 of them were sent to internment camps or prisons in Britain.
Most of the leaders of the Rising were executed following courts-martial. The Rising brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics, which for nearly 50 years had been dominated by constitutional nationalism. It, the British reaction to it, led to increased popular support for Irish independence. In December 1918, represented by the reconstituted Sinn Féin party, won 73 seats in a landslide victory in the general election to the British Parliament, they did not take their seats, but instead convened the First Dáil and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. The Soloheadbeg ambush started the War of Independence. 485 people were killed in the Easter Rising. About 54% were civilians, 30% were British military and police, 16% were Irish rebels. More than 2,600 were wounded. Many of the civilians were killed as a result of the British using artillery and heavy machine guns, or mistaking civilians for rebels. Others were caught in the crossfire in a crowded city.
The shelling and the fires it caused left parts of inner city Dublin in ruins. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, abolishing the Irish Parliament and giving Ireland representation in the British Parliament. From early on, many Irish nationalists opposed the union and the ensuing exploitation and impoverishment of the island, which led to a high level of depopulation. Opposition took various forms: constitutional and revolutionary; the Irish Home Rule movement sought to achieve self-government for Ireland, within the United Kingdom. In 1886, the Irish Parliamentary Party under Charles Stewart Parnell succeeded in having the First Home Rule Bill introduced in the British parliament, but it was defeated; the Second Home Rule Bill of 1893 was passed by the House of Commons but rejected by the House of Lords. After the fall of Parnell and more radical nationalists became disillusioned with parliamentary politics and turned toward more extreme forms of separatism.
The Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and the cultural revival under W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, together with the new political thinking of Arthur Griffith expressed in his newspaper Sinn Féin and organisations such as the National Council and the Sinn Féin League, led many Irish people to identify with the idea of an independent Gaelic Ireland; this was sometimes referred to by the generic term Sinn Féin. The Third Home Rule Bill was introduced by British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in 1912. Unionists, who were Protestant, opposed it, as they did not want to be ruled by a Catholic-dominated Irish government. Led by Sir Edward Carson and James Craig, they formed the Ulster Volunteers in January 1913. In response, Irish nationalists formed a rival paramilitary group, the Irish Volunteers, in November 1913; the Irish Republican Brotherhood was a driving force behind the Irish Volunteers and attempted to control it. Its leader was Eoin MacNeill, not an IRB member; the Irish Volunteers' stated goal was "to secure and to maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland".
It included people with a range of political views, was open to "all able-bodied Irishmen without distinction of creed, politics or social group". Another militant group, the Irish Citizen Army, was formed by trade unionists as a result of the Dublin Lock-out of that year
Tim Healy (politician)
Timothy Michael Healy, KC was an Irish nationalist politician, author and one of the most controversial Irish Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. His political career began in the 1880s under Charles Stewart Parnell's leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party, continued into the 1920s, when he was the first Governor-General of the Irish Free State, he was born in Bantry, County Cork, the second son of Maurice Healy, clerk of the Bantry Poor Law Union, Eliza Healy. His elder brother Thomas Healy was a solicitor and Member of Parliament for North Wexford and his younger brother Maurice Healy, with whom he held a lifelong close relationship, was a solicitor and MP for Cork City, his father was descended from a family line which in holding to their Catholic faith, lost their lands, which he compensated by being a scholarly gentleman. His father was transferred in 1862 to a similar position in Lismore, County Waterford, holding the post until his death in 1906.
Timothy was educated at the Christian Brothers school in Fermoy, was otherwise self-educated, in 1869 at the age of fourteen going to live with his uncle Timothy Daniel Sullivan MP in Dublin. He moved to England finding employment in 1871 with the North Eastern Railway Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There he became involved in the Irish Home Rule politics of the local Irish community. After leaving for London in 1878 Healy worked as a confidential clerk in a factory owned by his relative worked as a parliamentary correspondent for The Nation newspaper owned by his uncle, writing numerous articles in support of Parnell, the newly emergent and more militant home rule leader, his policy of parliamentary obstructionism. Parnell admired Healy's intelligence and energy after Healy had established himself as part of Parnell's broader political circle, he became Parnell's secretary, but was denied contact to Parnell's small inner circle of political colleagues. Parnell however brought Healy into the Irish Party and supported him as a nationalist candidate when elected MP for Wexford Borough in 1880–83 against the aspiring John Redmond whose father, William Archer Redmond, was its deceased MP.
Healy was returned unopposed to parliament, aided by the fact that Redmond stood aside and that he had survived an agrarian court case which alleging intimidation. In parliament Healy did not optically cut an imposing figure, but impressed by the application of sheer intelligence and volatile use of speech when he achieved the Healy Clause in the 1881 Land Act which provided that no further rent should in future be charged on tenant's improvements. By the mid-1880s Healy had acquired a reputation for a scurrilousness of tone, he married his cousin Eliza Sullivan in 1882, they had three daughters and three sons and he enjoyed a happy and intense family life interlinked both by friendship and intermarriage with the Sullivans of west Cork. Through his reputation as a friend of the farmers, after having been imprisoned for four months following an agrarian case, backed by Parnell, he was elected in a Monaghan by-election in June 1883-5, deemed to be the climax in the Healy-Parnell relationship.
In 1884 he was called to the Irish bar as barrister. His reputation allowed him to build an extensive legal practice in land cases. Parnell chose him unwisely for South Londonderry in 1885, he was elected in 1886–92 for North Longford. Prompted by the depression in the prices of dairy produce and cattle in the mid-1880 as well as bad weather for a number of years, many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents were left under the threat of eviction. Healy devised a strategy to secure a reduction in rent from the landlords which became known as the Plan of Campaign, organised in 1886 amongst others by Timothy Harrington. A passionate supporter of Parnell, he became disenchanted with his leader after Healy opposed Parnell's nomination of Captain William O’Shea to stand for a by-election in Galway city. At the time O’Shea was separated from his wife, Katharine O'Shea, with whom Parnell was secretly living. Healy objected to this, as the party had not been consulted and he believed Parnell was putting his personal relationship before the national interest.
When Parnell travelled to Galway to support O’Shea, Healy was forced to back down. In 1890 in a sensational divorce case O'Shea sued his wife for divorce, citing Parnell as co-respondent. Healy and most of Parnell's associates rejected Parnell's continuing leadership of the party, believing it was recklessly endangering the party's alliance with Gladstonian Liberalism. Healy became Parnell's most outspoken critic; when Parnell asked his colleagues at one party meeting "Who is the master of the party?", Healy famously retorted with another question "Aye, but, the mistress of the party?" – a comment that led to the men coming to blows. His savage onslaught in public reflected his conservative Catholic origin. A substantial minority of the Irish people never forgave him for his role during the divorce crisis, permanently damaging his own standing in public life; the rift prompted nine-year-old Dublin schoolboy James Joyce to write a poem called Et Tu, Healy?, which Joyce's father had printed and circulated.
Only three lines remain: Following Parnell's death in 1891, the IPP's anti-Parnellite majority group broke away forming the Irish National Federation under John Dillon. Healy was at first its most outspoken member, when in 1892 he captured North Louth for the anti-Parnellites, who in all won seventy-one seats, but finding it
Time in the Republic of Ireland
Ireland uses Irish Standard Time in the summer months and Greenwich Mean Time in the winter period. In Ireland, the Standard Time Act 1968 established that the time for general purposes in the State shall be one hour in advance of Greenwich mean time throughout the year; this act was amended by the Standard Time Act 1971, which established Greenwich Mean Time as a winter time period. Ireland therefore operates one hour behind standard time during the winter period, reverts to standard time in the summer months; this is defined in contrast to the other states in the European Union, which operate one hour ahead of standard time during the summer period, but produces the same end result. The instant of transition to and from daylight saving time is synchronised across Europe. In Ireland, winter time begins at 02:00 IST on the last Sunday in October, ends at 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in March; the following table lists recent past and near-future starting and ending dates of Irish Standard Time or Irish Summer Time: Before 1880, the legal time at any place in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was defined as local mean time, as held by the appeal in the 1858 court case Curtis v. March.
The Statutes Act, 1880 defined Dublin Mean Time as the legal time for Ireland. This was the local mean time at Dunsink Observatory outside Dublin, was about 25 minutes 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time, defined by the same act to be the legal time for Great Britain. After the Easter Rising, the time difference between Ireland and Britain was found inconvenient for telegraphic communication and the Time Act, 1916 provided that Irish time would be the same as British time, from 2:00 am Dublin Mean Time on Sunday 1 October 1916. Summer time had been introduced in May 1916 across the United Kingdom as a temporary efficiency measure for the First World War, the changeover from Dublin time to Greenwich time was simultaneous with the changeover from summer time to winter time. John Dillon opposed the first reading of the Time Bill for having been introduced without consultation of the Irish Parliamentary Party. T. M. Healy opposed the second reading on the basis that "while the Daylight Saving Bill added to the length of your daylight, this Bill adds to the length of your darkness".
After the Irish Free State became independent in 1922, subsequent developments tended to mirror those in the United Kingdom. This avoided having different times on either side of the border with Northern Ireland. Summer time was provided on a one-off basis by acts in 1923 and 1924, on an ongoing basis by the Summer Time Act, 1925; the 1925 act provided a default summer time period. Double summer time was considered but not introduced during the Emergency of World War II. From 1968 standard time was observed all year round, with no winter time change; this was an experiment in the run-up to Ireland's 1973 accession to the EEC, was undone in 1971. In those years, time in Ireland was the same as in the six EEC countries, except in the summer in Italy, which switched to Central European Summer Time. One artefact of the 1968 legislation is that "standard time" refers to summer time. From the 1980s, the dates of switch between winter and summer time have been synchronised across the European Union; the statutory instruments that have been issued under the Standard Time Acts are listed below, in format year/SI-number, linking to the Irish Statute Database text of the SI.
Except where stated, those issued up to 1967 were called "Summer Time Order <year>", while those issued from 1981 are "Winter Time Order <year>". 1926/, 1947/71, 1948/128, 1949/23, 1950/41, 1951/27, 1952/73, 1961/11, 1961/232, 1962/182, 1963/167, 1964/257, 1967/198, 1981/67, 1982/212, 1986/45, 1988/264, 1990/52, 1992/371, 1994/395, 1997/484, 2001/506 Possible adjustments to the Irish practice were discussed by the Oireachtas joint committee on Justice and Equality in November 2011, but the government stated it had no plans to change. In November 2012, Tommy Broughan introduced a private member's bill to permit a three-year trial of advancing time by one hour, to CET in winter and CEST in summer. Debate on the bill's second stage was adjourned on 5 July 2013, when Alan Shatter, the Minister for Justice and Equality, agreed to refer the matter to the joint committee for review, suggested that it consult with the British parliament and devolved assemblies. In July 2014, the joint committee issued an invitation for submissions on the bill.
On 8 February 2018, the European Parliament voted to ask the European Commission to re-evaluate the principle of Summer Time in Europe. After a web survey showing high support for not switching clocks twice annually, on 12 September 2018 the European Commission decided to propose that an end be put to seasonal clock changes In order for this to be valid, the European Union legislative procedure must be followed that the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament must both approve the proposal; the United Kingdom is due to have left the EU by and, if the UK does not follow the reform and contin
The Emergency (Ireland)
The Emergency was the state of emergency which existed in the state of Ireland during the Second World War. The state of Ireland remained neutral throughout the war. "The Emergency" has been used metonymically in historical and cultural commentary to refer to the state during the war. The state of emergency was proclaimed by Dáil Éireann on 2 September 1939, allowing the passage of the Emergency Powers Act 1939 by the Oireachtas the following day; this gave sweeping new powers to the government for the duration of the Emergency, including internment, censorship of the press and correspondence, government control of the economy. The Emergency Powers Act lapsed on 2 September 1946. Although the state of emergency itself was not rescinded until 1 September 1976, no emergency legislation was in force after 1946 to exploit this anomaly. On 6 December 1922, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the War of Independence, the island of Ireland became an autonomous dominion, known as the Irish Free State.
On 7 December 1922, the parliament of the six north-eastern counties known as Northern Ireland, voted to opt out of the Irish Free State and rejoin the United Kingdom. This Treaty settlement was followed by the bitter Irish Civil War between the pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty factions of the Irish Republican Army. After 1932, the governing party of the new state was the republican Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera. In 1937, de Valera introduced a new constitution, which had distanced the state further from the United Kingdom, which changed its name to "Ireland". In 1932–38 he had conducted the Anglo-Irish Trade War. De Valera had good relations with Neville Chamberlain, he resolved the two countries' economic differences, negotiated the return of the Treaty Ports—Berehaven and Lough Swilly—which had remained under British jurisdiction under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The major remaining disagreement between the countries was the status of Northern Ireland; the Irish saw it as rightfully Irish territory.
Within Ireland itself, armed opposition to the treaty settlement took the name of the anti-treaty IRA, seeing itself as the "true" government of Ireland. This IRA mounted armed attacks both in Great Ireland. On 1 September 1939, German troops invaded Poland, precipitating war with the UK and France, their allies. On 2 September, de Valera told the Dáil Éireann. In this he was universally supported by the Dáil and the country at large; the 1937 constitution was amended to allow the Government to take emergency powers, the Emergency Powers Act 1939 was passed that included censorship of the press and mail correspondence. The government was able to take control of the economic life of the country under the new Minister of Supply Seán Lemass. Liberal use was made of all of these powers. Internment of those who had committed a crime or were about to commit one would be used extensively against the IRA. Censorship was under the charge of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, Frank Aiken.
It was necessary to prevent publication of matter that might undermine the neutrality of the State and to prevent it becoming a clearing house for foreign intelligence, though over the period of the Emergency, the Act started to be used for more party political purposes such as preventing the publication of the numbers of Irish soldiers serving in the United Kingdom armed forces or industrial disputes within the state. In addition, the information made available to Irish people was carefully controlled. De Valera performed the duties of Minister of External Affairs, though the secretary for the Department of External Affairs, Joseph Walshe, was influential. On the declaration of the emergency, Walshe asked for assurances from the German minister in Dublin, Eduard Hempel that Germany would not use its legation for espionage nor attack Irish trade with Great Britain, he travelled to London on 6 September where he met the Dominions Secretary, Anthony Eden, conciliatory and defended Irish neutrality in subsequent Cabinet meetings.
In addition, the appointment of Sir John Maffey as a British representative in Dublin was agreed. For the Irish government, neutrality meant not displaying alignment with either side. On one hand, that meant the open announcement of military activity such as the sighting of submarines or the arrival of parachutists, the suppression of any foreign intelligence activity. Ireland's geographic position meant. For example, British airmen who crash-landed in the State were allowed to go free if they could claim not to have been on a combat mission. Many chose to escape to Great Britain via Northern Ireland. Allied mechanics were allowed to retrieve crash-landed Allied aircraft. There was extensive co-operation between British and Irish intelligence and the exchange of information such as detailed weather reports of the Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, in the first few years of the war, the government did not show any overt preference for either side; this is because de Valera had to keep national unity, which meant accommodating the large swathe of Irish society that rejected anything to do with the British, some of w
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