page_title: Executive Council of the Irish Free State
section_title: "His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State"
hierarchical_section_title: Executive Council of the Irish Free State / "His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State"
caption_attribution_description: English: George V and his Prime Ministers at the 1926 Imperial Conference. The conference was the sixth Imperial Conference held amongst the Prime Ministers of the dominions of the British Empire. It was held in London from 19 October to 22 November 1926. It was notable as the conference that produced the Balfour Declaration, which established the principle that the dominions are all equal in status, and not subordinate to the United Kingdom.George V (seated, centre) with Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin (United Kingdom; seated left), Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King (Canada; seated right). Standing Rt. Hon. Walter Stanley Monroe (Newfoundland), Rt. Hon. Gordon Coates (New Zealand), Rt. Hon. Stanley Bruce (Australia), Rt. Hon. J. B. M. Hertzog (Union of South Africa) and W.T. Cosgrave (Irish Free State).
context_page_description: The Executive Council was the cabinet and de facto executive branch of government of the 1922–1937 Irish Free State. Formally, executive power was vested in the Governor-General on behalf of the King. In practice, however, it was the Council that governed, since the Governor-General was bound to act on its advice. The Executive Council included a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council and a deputy prime minister called the Vice-President. A member of the Council was called an executive minister, as distinct from an extern minister who had charge of a department without being in the Council.
  The President of the Executive Council was appointed by the Governor-General after being nominated by Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, and the remaining Executive Ministers were nominated by the President. The Executive Council could also be removed by a vote of no confidence in the Dáil.
  For formal and diplomatic purposes the description "His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State" was sometimes used.
context_section_description: The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy, initially one of the dominions within the British Empire (later the Commonwealth of Nations), whose monarch had the same title in all parts of the Empire and its territories, and the Free State government was sometimes referred to as His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State.
  After the 1926 Imperial Conference, attended by Cosgrave as President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, the King's title was changed under the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927. The altered title, as proclaimed in London, replaced the words "...of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and..." with "...of Great Britain, Ireland and...". This change did not stop the Irish government using the description "His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State" in agreements between the monarch's governments in the United Kingdom and in the Irish Free State, as in: 
  Agreement between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State as to the Registration and Control of Veterinary Surgeons (1931).
  Agreement interpreting and supplementing Article ten of the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland to which the force of law was given by the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act, 1922 and by the Constitution of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann) Act, 1922 (1929).
  The description was also in regular official use between 1929 and 1934 in Notes published by HMSO, "in Regard to Commercial Relations" formally exchanged "Between His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State" and foreign governments including the governments of:
  Brazil, 1931
  Costa Rica, 1934
  Guatemala, 1930
  Roumania, 1930
  Salvador, 1931,
  and in other such Notes, including:
  Exchange of Notes Between His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State and the Italian Government Concerning Reciprocal Recognition of Passenger Ships' Certificates and Emigrant Ship Regulations, 1930
  Exchange of Notes Between His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State and the Egyptian Government Prolonging the Commercial "Modus Vivendi" of July 25/28, 1930.
  In a debate in the Dáil in December 1932, when de Valera was President, on a government motion to approve a trade agreement negotiated at the Ottawa Conference in August between the Irish Free State and the Dominion of Canada, it was remarked that the Vice-President (Ernest Blythe) had signed the agreement "on behalf of His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State." But the description went out of use at least by 1937, when the Constitution of Ireland came into effect as a result of de Valera's process of constitutional autochthony. Any remaining vestige of the monarch's part in the constitution, or doubt about the person or office of the head of state, was removed when the state was finally declared to be a republic, as from 18 April 1949, under the Republic of Ireland Act 1948.
caption: W.T.Cosgrave, first head of the Government in the Irish Free State (standing, far-right), representing the Irish Free State at the 1926 Imperial Conference in London, along with King George V and the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
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