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The Constitution of Dáil Éireann (Irish: Bunreacht Dála Éireann), more commonly known as the 'Dáil Constitution', was a short, provisional constitution adopted by the First Dáil in January 1919. It created a ministry or Áireacht, headed by the Príomh Aire, also called President of Dáil Éireann, who was in effect the prime minister. Because Sinn Féin had almost split between monarchists and republicans at its 1917 Árd Fhéis in order to avoid another row on the issue, no head of state was provided for in the original Dáil Constitution. The constitution was, however, amended in August 1921 at the request of the then President of Dáil Éireann, Eamon de Valera to upgrade the office to full head of state, with the office renamed President of the Republic.
its close modelling of its institutional system on the Westminster System of government, specifically with the inclusion of a parliament from whom a ministry was both chosen and to whom it was answerable, has been noted by Irish political scientists and historians, notably Professor Brian Farrell, who suggested that the leaders of the new state stuck to a system that, through Irish participation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the new Irish political elite had close experience of, and identification with, notwithstanding their radical republican rhetoric.
External links
Full text from Wikisource (http://www.wikisource.org):
- English text (http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann)
- Irish text (http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunreacht_D%C3%A1la_%C3%89ireann)