Talk:Provisional Government of Ireland (1922)

message: The status and authority of this 'Provisional' administration was disputed from its inception. It should be noted that the perspective of this article is very much biased towards a particular  view of Irish history and constitutional development.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by RashersTierney (talk • contribs) 23:18, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The 'provisional' in the 'Provisional Government' 

message: This article has always been original research. From its creation in 2004 to the beginning of 2008 it had no references at all. Right up to this week it has been almost entirely sourced from primary sources: the text of acts and agreements and contemporary newspaper accounts. The handful of secondary sources that there were were referencing peripheral matters, and in almost every case they were misquoted. Now, tidying up the article is a worthy aim, but replacing original research with other original research is not an option. In particular, keeping the same primary sources and putting a different gloss on them does not tend to improve the article. A number of statements have been added that appear to be one editor's opinion. Such statements need to be supported by reliable published secondary sources that explicitly make the assertion contained in the statements. It is not enough to say that they are self-evident if you read the text of the act or whatever. For instance:
*"The Provisional Government was a creature of United Kingdom law".
*"Accordingly, United Kingdom law expressly described the provisional government as 'the provisional Government of Southern Ireland'."
*"Moreover, under United Kingdom law there was no question of the Provisional Government being a provisional government of 'Ireland'."
*"Notwithstanding that its jurisdiction was over Southern Ireland only, the Provisional Government styled itself the Provisional Government of Ireland".
*"The Provisional Government is sometimes erroneously referred to as having been the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State" (a particularly egregious one: many books, articles, web sites etc. refer to it as such, but I have never seen one that said it is erroneous).
*"Although there was a gap in formal accountability to an elected parliament..."
*"The Provisional Government's actions were subject to the Courts."
There is no paucity of books on the period that will have good detail on the formation of the Provisional Government, its name and so on. Some of these should be viewable on Google Books. If some or all of those statements can be sourced, well and good. If not, I propose to remove them, and leave the bare facts, pending somebody doing a proper rewrite.  Scolaire (talk) 17:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: For the benefit of others, I am the 'editor' (if I can call myself that) whose quoted above. Anyway, I do agree that there is a bit of a problem in that I don't think there is in fact any published legal analysis on what the name of the "provisional Government of Southern Ireland" (to quote the UK statute that created it) was. It is unfortunately a very marginal topic. If anyone can point to a legal analysis that's been published, I'd be delighted. What's described by Scolaire as the "bare facts" that are now left in are, unfortunately, not factual. All of the points Scolaire lists above he does not seem to dispute. If he does, do let us know what's disputed. They are basic factual statements. No one has published a legal analysis of the name of the government so we either repeat inaccuracies or try to address the gap in a 'common sense' way. At the moment, mumbo jumbo is presented as fact. I've opened a section to discuss the new wording (below). Scolaire and I interacted last year and I (up above in the discussion page - you can see our interactions) hold no hope of getting anywhere with him. But, who knows, others might chime in sometime. In the meantime, well done Scolaire - suspect your 'facts' will remain up.Frenchmalawi (talk) 00:00, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, (1) yes, I do dispute all of the points I listed – that's why I listed them and why I removed them from the article; (2) I did not, in the end, leave "bare facts" – I rewrote the section, citing reliable, published secondary sources. This, apparently, is what you call "mumbo-jumbo". I'll respond to the rest in the section below.  Scolaire (talk) 09:38, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

text: The article on Barthes' S/Z could be original research, without a single footnote, but it looks OK to me.PatrickGuinness (talk) 21:50, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research 

message: The article reads: "Therefore, between its formation on 14 January 1922 and 19 September 1922 (when the Provisional Parliament first met) the Provisional Government was responsible to no parliament at all."
The PGI was accountable to the UK Parliament until such time as the Treaty provisions were effected, as they were in December 1922. The Second Dáil members had been elected in the 1921 UK election, and they had chosen to sit as the Dáil, they had voted to approve the treaty, and the treaty was going to create the Irish Free State. In the meantime, the PGI was entitled to call elections for any number of parliaments in the 26 counties, so long as they ultimately set up a state in line with the Treaty. The issue of who the PGI was accountable to is only of theoretic interest, as its progress was debated in Westminster and Belfast as well as Dublin.78.18.200.138 (talk) 12:54, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never been fond of that section. The whole thing is original research as far as I can see. History books and articles talk about the fact that there were two governments in Ireland between January and August 1922, and that they were merged under W.T. Cosgrave after the deaths of Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, but I have never yet encountered one that talked about "accountability", or whether the Provisional Govt. was responsible to any parliament. If it's not in reliable secondary sources, then it is somebody's personal commentary, and doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia. The ref for that sentence you quoted is the Department of the Taoiseach (its new home is here). Some will say there's nothing more reliable than the government's own website, but in fact it doesn't satisfy WP:Reliable sources, because we have no idea who wrote it, or what the editorial process (including fact-checking) was. It is in fact no more reliable than a blog. Moreover, the thing that is being cited in that ref is not a discussion of "accountability", or even a discussion of the Provisional Govt., it is a footnote to the table of ministers in the second ministry of the Second Dáil. Effectively it's saying, "the Dáil government was responsible to the Dáil and, by the way, I can't see who the Provisional Govt. was responsible to." I agree with you that the issue of who the Provisional Govt. was accountable to is only of theoretical interest, and it's not even interesting enough to have been discussed in reliable sources. The whole section should be deleted, and replaced with a few words about the dual government system between January and August 1922. Here is a book that could be cited. There are plenty more.  Scolaire (talk) 14:21, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: But it's objectively true that the Provisional Government was not responsible to any parliament until September 1922, nor did it need to be. The agreed plan hit the buffers, and in hindsight Collins turned out to be a weak statesman, promising all things to all men.78.17.34.145 (talk) 21:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accountability aspects 

message: This article is worth citing:
* 
Draft version at:
* 
Introduction:
:The date of 6 December 1922 ... had so many competitors for the title of Irish “independence day”, for example Easter Monday 1916, 21 January 1919, 6 December 1921, 14 January 1922, 31 March 1922 and 1 April 1922. ... This article examines the legal basis for fixing 6 December 1922 as the date on which an internationally recognised Irish State came into existence. This question raises many difficult issues and it might well be asked why such an examination is necessary at all when many organs of the Irish State already treat 6 December 1922 as the de facto date on which it came into existence. One reason is that a number of early decisions of the Irish courts, including the Supreme Court, assert that the State came into existence on dates other than 6 December 1922. ... Recent publications have also cast doubt on the validity of 6 December 1922 as the date on which the state came into being.
jnestorius(talk) 12:21, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds interesting. But reading the abstract, it just seems to be asking an academic – and possibly abstract – legal question about the date of the creation of "the Irish state". Does it argue that the Provisional Government did not become the Government of the Free State on 6 December 1922? If not, I can't see how it might affect this article.  Scolaire (talk) 17:49, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Mohr 2018 paper

message: No other Provisional Governments of Ireland that were recognised by the outside world, nor will there be, so why the year in brackets?78.16.102.94 (talk) 20:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the brackets and 1922? Were there others?