The Irish Free State
With the death of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith during the civil war, the leadership of the Irish Free State fell to William T. Cosgrave, and finally in the summer of 1923 the new government began to reconstruct Ireland as an independent nation. A civil service was set up, along with a police force and the hydroelectric scheme on the River Shannon, which was to lead to the establishment of the ESB (Electricity Supply Board). Meanwhile Eamonn de Valera, still an important political force, abandoned Sinn Fein's post-civil war policy of boycotting the Dail to form his own political party in 1926. This took the explicitly mythological name of Fianna Fail (Soldiers of Destiny) and was victorious in the 1932 general election. Under de Valera other state bodies were set up, including Coras Iompair Eireann (road and rail transport), Aer Lingus (air transport) and Bord na Mona (peat production). In 1933, the rival Fine Gael (Tribes of Gaels) party was founded. The recession of the 1930s was made considerably worse for Ireland by the Economic War . De Valera had withheld repayments to England of loans made to tenants to buy their holdings; the British responded by imposing heavy duties on Irish goods. In 1938, a new constitution came into effect, which finally declared Ireland's complete independence by renouncing British sovereignty. The Free State, under the new name of Eire , was to be governed by a two-chamber parliament (the Dail and the Seanad), with a president (the Uachtaran), and a prime minister (the Taoiseach). Ireland remained officially neutral during World War II, although considerable informal help was given to the Allies. De Valera, on the other hand, was the only government leader in the world to offer his commiserations - to a Nazi German minister in Dublin - on the suicide of Adolf Hitler
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