Did Eoin Mac Néill betray the people of south Armagh, Derry?

[diy01]

Eoin Mac Néill, as representative of the Free State for the Irish Boundary Commission, resigned about a month after details of the negotiations were leaked to a newspaper. The proposed changes would have seen about 30,000 people joining the Free State, with territory and approximately 7,000 (in east Donegal) becoming part of Northern Ireland.

Did his resignation solidify the border as set out in 1920? Did he wreck what chance there was of the FS attaining a net gain of territory and population?

Did he betray the people of south Armagh, Derry city, Fermanagh etc?

[Mr Crowley]

Eoin Mac Néill, as representative of the Free State for the Irish Boundary Commission, resigned about a month after details of the negotiations were leaked to a newspaper. The proposed changes would have seen about 30,000 people joining the Free State, with territory and approximately 7,000 (in east Donegal) becoming part of Northern Ireland.

Did his resignation solidify the border as set out in 1920? Did he wreck what chance there was of the FS attaining a net gain of territory and population?

Did he betray the people of south Armagh, Derry city, Fermanagh etc?

Mac Neill facilitated the fudging of the boundary commission and I think that considerable questions are raised in regard to his loyalties.

[Rocky]

Eoin Mac Néill, as representative of the Free State for the Irish Boundary Commission, resigned about a month after details of the negotiations were leaked to a newspaper. The proposed changes would have seen about 30,000 people joining the Free State, with territory and approximately 7,000 (in east Donegal) becoming part of Northern Ireland.

Did his resignation solidify the border as set out in 1920? Did he wreck what chance there was of the FS attaining a net gain of territory and population?

Did he betray the people of south Armagh, Derry city, Fermanagh etc?

I think he was screwed to begin with and I think he knew that and to be fair I think Cosgrave knew that. The simple fact is that the Unionists would have responded with force of arms had major changes been made to the border and no one wanted a war. However he could have done a better job and he was a bit navie.

The only hope we ever had of having a United Ireland was just after the Treaty was signed, but the Civil War prevented that, but even that was very small. By 1924 NI was established.

[Nem]

Nobody wanted the Boundary Commission to work, not the Dublin government, Stormont Government or the Catholic Church.

[Catalpa]

Nobody wanted the Boundry Commission to work, not the Dublin government, Stormont Government or the Catholic Church.

Why makes you think that?

I would have thought getting back a fair chunk of the National Territory through a review of the Border would have been viewed as quite desirable by Dublin and the Catholic Church etc?

[Twilight]

Is there no statute of limitations in Northern Ireland?

[Nem]

There is the Limitation Act of 1980.

The Dublin Government had just come out a Civil War and certainly had no intention of engaging in another conflict for which there was the potential in the redrawing of the Border. And there was also the shady issue of the imperial debt which the Free State Government was supposed to pay but never did. Although the latter is a bit vague IMHO. See for instance Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 by Paul Bew.

In the upper echelons of the Catholic Church there was ambivalence to the Boundary Commission. Their worry was that if large number of Catholics were moved to the Free State their case for State funding for their schools was to be further undermined as per Lynn.

[peadarmc]

i dont want to offend any redmondites out there but a lot of the treaty had its origins while redmond was leader of the Home Rule Party and set about insulting northern unionists! the seed of partition was sown, not in 1921, but during the HomeRule era of c 1912 (larne gunrunning etc!) this is the first instance of serious militant opposition to an Irish Parliament in that part of the country! He did nothing to appease them, in fact he insulted them, and did nothing to assure them that Home Rule would be anything other than "RomeRule! Dont believe me and think 1916 or the War of Independence had something to do with it? then why did the Northern (mostly unionist) regiments fight as a unit in the "Great War" while the southern regiments were split left right and centre??!

[FutureTaoiseach]

He was snowed-under with work in the Dept of Education and it was wrong of Cosgrave to choose a man in that position as our representative on the Boundary-Commission. But I think that the change of govt in 1925 under Bonar Law, a partisan of the Ulster Unionist cause from Canada, doomed any prospects of moving the border, ensuring that NI was a divided state making the later Troubles all but inevitable.

[Catalpa]

The Boundry Commission was never really going to go anywhere and I think everybody knew that but they had to go through the motions.

Cosgrave got a Quid pro quo from the British by they agreeing to foregoe any payments due over the 'Imperial Debt'.

He said after he returned from London:

'I had only one figure in my mind and that was a huge nought. That was the figure I strove to get, and I got it.'

But it was basically a face saving exercise as the whole thing was a Fiasco for the Nationalists and a triumph for Ulster Unionism.