SEVERING LINK WITH CROWN

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25662, 26 November 1948, Page 7

SEVERING LINK WITH CROWN

BILL INTRODUCED IN DAIL EIREANN

MR COSTELLO EXPLAINS MEASURE (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ' LONDON, November 24. The Prime Minister of Eire (Mr John Costello), introducing a bill to repeal the External Relations Act in the Dail, said that the measure had not been conceived in any spirit of hostility to the British people and the British Crown, or to the present occupant of the Throne, whose illness they regretted and whose recovery they hoped .would be speedy. It proposed that Commonwealth countries should be granted citizenship rights in Ireland in return for comparable rights for Irish citizens in

the Commonwealth. It was not the Eire Government’s intention that a Commonwealth citizen should be a foreigner in Ireland. Neither did it want Irish citizens to be regarded as foreigners in Commonwealth countries.

The bill was not conceived in a mood of flamboyant patriotism or aggressive nationalism or irresponsible isolationism, nor with any desire or intention to dislocate or interrupt the delicate mechanism of the Commonwealth.

Mr Costello, speaking of the attitude of members of the British Commonwealth. said that there existed between those nations and Eire an abundance of good will and an intense desire that Eire should prosper and go the road the Irish people wished to follow. Eire was leaving the Commonwealth and breaking a tenuous link with the Crown because it was impossible for Eire to regard the Crown as a badge of freedom. He claimed that in the name of the King the British had committed acts of persecution in the past. Mr Costello said that the bill would lift the partition problem from the national arena and put it on an international plane.

“The problem of undoing that wrong devolves upon Great Britain. We will do our part here.” he said. "Those are the reasons why 'this bill has become inevitable. Since 193 C when th« External Relations Act was passed, there have been unending arguments whether we are in or out of the Commonwealth. In my opinion, we are not. and never have been, since 1936 a member of the British Commonwealth.”

M” Costello explained that the act would »come into force on a date appointed by the Government, because legal difficulties •had yet to be cleared un. Those difficulties might necessitate special legislation in Eire and Canada, and nerhans in New Zealand. Australia and Britain.

Mr A. P. Bvrne (Independent) moved an amendment opposing the bill on the ground that it would seriously impair the prospect of uniting Ireland. He said: “We should unite Ireland first, and later declare a republic for the whole of Ireland.”