Provisional Government of Southern Ireland - Accountability

Accountability

There was never again “a meeting of members of the Parliament elected for constituencies in Southern Ireland” after 14 January 1922 and neither the Treaty nor the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 provided that the Provisional Government was or would be accountable to any such body. On 27 May 1922 Lord Fitzalan, in accordance with the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 formally dissolved the Parliament of Southern Ireland and by proclamation called “a Parliament to be known as and styled the Provisional Parliament”. Under the terms of the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922, the Provisional Government did become accountable to that Parliament. Therefore, between its formation on 14 January 1922 and 19 September 1922 (when the Provisional Parliament first met) the Provisional Government was responsible to no Parliament at all.

However, its members were also members of the Republican Dáil and that Parliament held meetings into June. The Dáil had no legitimacy in British law and under its own laws was the parliament to which another government was accountable – the Aireacht (Irish Republic Government). The constitutional uniqueness of the situation was such that the viceroy Viscount Fitzalan remained in his post undisturbed for months after his "surrender", and in the summer of 1922 he frequently held military reviews of departing British soldiers in the Phoenix Park outside the then Viceregal Lodge.