Socio-economic rights from below: social contestation and constitutionalism in Ireland (1848–2016)

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Notes

1. The Irish Free State or Saorstát Éireann was the political entity that came out of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 that granted formal independence to 26 counties in the ‘South’ and left six counties in the ‘North’ under British rule.

2. In Ireland, during this global financial crisis, the private debt of bankers was nationalised by the Irish Government which, in order to secure a €64 billion bailout, accepted a series of austerity programmes promoted by the Troika (ECB, IMF, EC) – a crippling debt that not only existing citizens, but also future generations, will have to shoulder.

3. Murray is here quoting Marx from his Introduction to the Grundrisse (in Carver 1996).

4. Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil (FF) are two parties which split from Sinn Féin during the decade of the 1920s, the traditional nationalist party which remained opposed to the partition treaty of 1921. Cumann na nGaedheal eventually would merge with other conservative parties in 1932 to create Fine Gael (FG). Both FF and FG have dominated Irish politics since, in what many call ‘Civil War Politics’.

5. It was the first independent parliament (Dáil, in Irish language) established in the context of the Irish war of independence (1919–1921).