Letter from Seán Nunan to Maurice Moynihan (Dublin)
(331/17)

I am directed by the Minister for External Affairs to reply to your minute S13983 of the 23rd December, 1953,¹ in which you request the views of this Department as to whether steps should now be taken with a view to terminating the national emergency.

After full consideration of the questions involved by this Department, the Minister for External Affairs is of opinion that the time has not yet come to put an end to the national emergency which was brought into being under Article 28.3.30 of the Constitution by resolutions of both Houses of the Oireachtas passed on the 2nd September, 1939. The Resolutions in question were expressly based upon the fact that, arising out of the armed conflict then taking place between certain European countries, in which the State was not a participant, a national emergency existed affecting the vital interests of the State. Although the armed conflict in question ceased in 1945, the Minister does not consider that the national emergency arising out of that armed conflict has yet terminated, either in law or in fact.

From the point of view of international law, a state of war still continues to exist between Germany and the countries with which she went to war in 1939. No peace treaty has been signed either with Germany or with Austria and there seems little prospect at the moment of the conclusion of such a treaty.

The Minister regards the legal continuance of this state of war, and the actual fighting which took place in Greece, Korea and elsewhere, as symptomatic of the acute tension which continues to exist in international relations and which, in his opinion, does not warrant at present the termination of the national emergency.

Apart from legal reasons justifying the continuance of the state of emergency, the Minister is strongly of the view that its premature termination now would have a very adverse effect on public opinion. So far as Irish public opinion is concerned, the effect might be to lull people into a false sense of security, and the fact that Ireland would be the only state to declare that no further emergency existed would probably be most unfavourably interpreted abroad.

In particular, it might be said that this country’s refusal to consider joining NATO is due, not to the existence of Partition, but to an unrealistic disbelief in the necessity for defence preparations at the present time.

[handwritten note]

It will be observed that the Department of External Affairs make no attempt at all to reconcile their present attitude in the matter, as set out in the foregoing minute, with the contrary attitude expressed by them in their previous minute of the 25th January 1947 on the matter.²