Dail and IRA
According to Curran, this was part of an on-going
attempt by de Valera to tighten government control over the IRA so as to
prevent its opposition to a compromise peace. O’Donoghue
says that these efforts were blocked by the IRB group on the GHQ staff. Macardle claims that the Executive of the IRA met at this
time and by a majority vote decided to dissolve itself so as “to remove any
doubt as to the effective control of the Government over all the forces of the
state”. (This is not mentioned by O’Donoghue.)