Meeting of Anti-Treaty TDs

Introduction from Chronology

They claimed that they constituted the Second Dáil which remained the de jure parliament since they considered that the Third Dáil was an illegal assembly as the Second Dáil had never been dissolved.

More Detail

In the government appointed by de Valera, Austen Stack was Minister of Finance; Robert Barton was Minister of Economic Affairs; Sean T. O’Kelly was Minister of Local Government; Liam Mellows was Minister of Defense and PJ Ruttledge was Minister of Home Affairs. (Mellows was in prison and soon to be executed.)

De Valera also appointed 12 members of the Second Dáil to act as a Council of State – they were Austen Stack, Robert Barton, Count Plunkett, JJ O’Kelly, Laurence Ginnell, Sean T. O’Kelly, Mrs O’Callaghan, Mary MacSwiney, PJ Ruttledge, Sean Moylan, MP Colivet and Sean O’Mahoney.  De Valera admitted that there was no prospect that the government could actually function and Stack testified that the financial resources were virtually nil. 

Hopkinson says the tensions between the political and military on the anti-Treaty side remained.  Curran says that the formation of this government changed nothing and power still lay on the anti-Treaty side with their military. Dorney notes that Sean Moylan was the only senior military man in the Council of State and goes to say that the truth was “that the IRA was the senior partner in the anti-Treaty Republican movement” (Dorney 2017, pg 141).

See Dec-08-22/4 for O’Higgins view of de Valera and his Council of State.

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