Powers
Under the constitution the Oireachtas had exclusive authority to:
- Legislate, including approving the budget.
- Create subordinate legislatures.
- Amend the Constitution.
- Permit the state to participate in a war.
- Raise and control armed forces.
There were however also a number of limitations to the Oireachtas power:
- Laws or constitutional amendments were invalid if they violated the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
- It could not retrospectively criminalise acts that were not illegal at the time they were committed.
- Until the 1931 Statute of Westminster, the British Parliament retained the power, in theory, to legislate for the Irish Free State without its consent.
- The Oireachtas could only legislate for the Irish Free State (defined as the area which had previously been known as Southern Ireland), and not for Northern Ireland.
Read more about this topic: Oireachtas Of The Irish Free State
Famous quotes containing the word powers:
“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“My Vanquisher, spoild of his vanted spoile;
Death his deaths wound shall then receive, & stoop
*nglorious, of his mortall sting disarm’d.
I through the ample Air in Triumph high
Shall lead Hell Captive maugre Hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight
Pleas’d, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Everyone confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)