After the 1920 local elections there was a Sinn Féin majority on the council, which supported the self-proclaimed Irish Republic's independence war against the UK. In 1921, when the town clerk suggested that the office of Swordbearer might be abolished, the Marshal wrote to the clerk defending the existing pawnbroking regulations, and the council agreed not to change them. The 1926 report of the Greater Dublin Commission of Inquiry proposed to remove the ceremonial vestiges of the corporation, including the Marshal. The report was not implemented, and the office of Marshal survived until 1965.