Dáil Transfers Authority to IRA
On March 11th, 1921, the embattled First Dáil passed a resolution that if ever enemy action threatened to render the assembly inquorate, its authority should be devolved to the Army to be held in trust until the Republic had been secured.
On December 8th, 1938, the surviving Republican TDs of the Second Dáil, meeting as the Executive Council of Dáil Éireann, voted to enact that transfer of power. This is the statement they issued.
DÁIL ÉIREANN
In consequence of armed opposition ordered and sustained by England, and the defection of elected representatives of the people over the period since the Republican Proclamation of Easter 1916 was ratified, three years later, by the newly inaugurated Government of the Irish Republic, we hereby delegate the authority reposed in us to the Army Council, in the spirit of the decision taken by Dáil Éireann in the spring of 1921, and later endorsed by the Second Dáil.
In thus transferring the trust of which it has been our privilege to be the custodians for twenty years, we earnestly exhort all citizens and friends of the Irish Republic at home and abroad to dissociate themselves openly and absolutely from England's unending aggressions: and we urge on them to disregard England's recurring war scares, remembering that our ancient and insular nation, bounded entirely by the seas, has infinitely less reason to become involved in the conflicts now so much threatened than have the neutral small nations lying between England and the Power she desires to overthrow.
Confident, in delegating this sacred trust to the Army of the Republic that, in their every action towards its consummation, they will be inspired by the high ideals and the chivalry of our martyred comrades, we, as Executive Council of Dáil Éireann, Government of the Republic, append our names.
Seán Ó Ceallaigh (Ceann Comhairle)
George Noble Plunkett
Professor William Stockley
Mary MacSwiney
Brian Ó hUiginn
Tom Maguire
Cathal Ó Murchadha
Dublin, December 8, 1938.