Attitude of the Government – Relationship with the Trust

From a legal perspective, under the Transfer of Function Order 1922, the Free State Government was excluded from all liability in respect of the re-instatement into civil life of the ex-servicemen and their dependents and any future support. Although not responsible for ex-servicemen, the Free State Government took measures to ensure that supporters of the Crown were not penalised. Under an agreement on the implementation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Government undertook ‘to protect from molestation or victimization the persons, property and interests of all who are thought to have sided or sympathised with the Forces of the Crown’. As a consequence the Dáil Éireann enacted legislation which provided an amnesty for all members of the naval, military, police, or civil services of the British and all other persons ‘by whom acts of hostility against the Irish people were committed, aided or abetted during the past six years’. This may have not been relevant to the British Forces withdrawing from Ireland but it was important for many Irish ex-servicemen who had been part of or aided the Crown Forces and remained in Ireland.

The Irish Government took the unusual step of allowing a British Government agency, the Trust, to operate in the Free State and continue the programme to build cottages for ex-servicemen after the transfer of power, passing the necessary legislation, the Land Trust Powers Act in 1923, to enable it to function. This went against the views of the revolutionary government; Michael Collins resolved in 1920 to thwart British reconstruction policies aimed at helping returning veterans to find employment, purchase land, or establish a business, as he believed benefits should accrue to nationalist supporters not to enemies of the republican state, and that the British Government intended through suitable rewards to ensure the ex-servicemen were a bulwark against nationalism.