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The Constitution of Ireland provides that "[t]he name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland". Under Irish statute law, Republic of Ireland (or Poblacht na hÉireann) is "the description of the State"[16] but not its official name. This official description was provided for in the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which transferred the remaining duties of the monarch to an elected president. However, the name of the state in English remained Ireland. A change to the name of the state would require a constitutional amendment. In the United Kingdom however, the Ireland Act 1949 provided that Republic of Ireland may be used as a name for the Irish state (although it did not make use of that term mandatory).[17] Although initially accepted by the British government,[18] the name Ireland became a source of contention between the British and Irish governments. These concerns arose because part of the island of Ireland is in the United Kingdom and so its government regarded the name as inappropriate. In a 1989 case, a majority of the Irish Supreme Court expressed the view that Irish authorities should not enforce extradition warrants where they referred to the state by a name other than Ireland (in this case the warrants had used the name Éire).[19] As part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which resolved issues relating to Northern Ireland, the state dropped its claim to jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland. Since that agreement, the United Kingdom has accepted and uses the name Ireland. The terms Republic of Ireland, the Republic or the South are often used when there is a need to distinguish the state from the island or when discussing Northern Ireland (the North). Many Irish republicans, and other opponents of partition, avoid calling the state Ireland. They see it as reinforcing partition and fuelling the perception that 'Ireland' and 'Irishness' are restricted to the Republic (see partitionism). Instead, they often refer to the state as the 26 Counties (with Northern Ireland as the Six Counties or 6 Counties) and sometimes as the Free State (a reference to the pre-1937 state).[20] |
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