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.