Eoin MacNeill - Irish Boundary Commission

Irish Boundary Commission

In 1924 the Irish Boundary Commission was set up to renegotiate the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State; MacNeill represented the Free State. On 7 November 1925 a conservative British paper the Morning Post published a leaked map showing a part of County Donegal that was to be transferred to Northern Ireland; the opposite of the main aims of the Commission. Perhaps embarrassed by this and more so because, he said, that it had declined to respect the terms of the Treaty, McNeill resigned from the Commission on 20 November. He also resigned on 24 November as Minister for Education, a position unrelated to his work on the Commission.

On 3 December 1925 the Free State government agreed with the governments in London and Belfast to end its onerous Treaty requirement to pay its share of the United Kingdom's "imperial debt", and in exchange it agreed that the 1920 boundary would remain as it was, overriding the Commission. This angered many nationalists and MacNeill was the subject of much criticism, though in reality he and the commission had been sidestepped by the inter-governmental debt renegotiation. In any case, despite his resignations, the intergovernmental boundary deal was approved by a Dáil vote of 71–20 on 10 December 1925, and MacNeill is listed as voting with the majority in favour. He lost his Dáil seat at the June 1927 election.