British Subjects
When the Irish Free State was created out of part of the United Kingdom in 1922, the existing status of "British subject" was, from the point of view of British nationality law, left unaffected. Broadly speaking, this was because, as a dominion within the British Commonwealth, the Irish Free State continued to form part of "His Majesty's Dominions".
This British theory of "British subject" nationality was not fully shared by the Irish and as early as the 1920s was discussed in Ireland in the following terms:
The meaning of 'citizenship is defined only to the extent of saying that the citizen shall 'within the limits of the jurisdiction of the Irish Free State enjoy the privileges and be subject to the obligations of such citizenship'. There appears to be here a suggestion that the status of citizen of the Irish Free State carries no privileges or obligations outside the jurisdiction of the Irish Free State: that the Irish Free State citizen when he goes to France has no 'privileges or obligations' as such. This may not have been intended at all: on the other hand it may have been deliberately inserted in pursuance of a British theory that the citizen of any Dominion, once he gets outside his Dominion, must rely for support on his 'Imperial' status as a 'British Subject'Read more about this topic: British Nationality Law And The Republic Of Ireland
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