Inheriting the royals: royal chartered bodies in Ireland after 1922

Abstract

The establishment of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann) in 1922 did not occur on a blank canvas. A slew of administrative bodies and agencies with pre-1922 origins now found themselves under a new jurisdiction, still familiar in some respects but alien in others. The Irish State Administration Database indicates that the functions performed by these pre-1922 bodies included the delivery of public services and regulatory oversight. The resilience of pre-1922 bodies arguably ensured a greater degree of day-to-day administrative continuity and stability after 1922 than may otherwise have been the case.This article focuses on a particular subset of these pre-1922 entities – royal chartered bodies – carried into Saorstát Éireann and beyond. Of special interest are the peculiar legal mechanisms through which these bodies were sustained in an altered constitutional landscape. The discontinuation of a pre-1922 royal prerogative to grant and amend royal charters presented legal conundrums for royal chartered bodies and the state. This was mitigated through a mixture of tailored public and private legislation of the Oireachtas. These dynamics are interrogated through the lenses of temporality and legal pluralism.