Sir,—When the lord lieutenant handed over Dublin Castle on 16 January 1922 he was acting in accordance with the terms of the Treaty, as ratified by Dáil Éireann. As Donal Kennedy (HI 26.4, July/August 2018, Letters) surely knows, Article 17 of the Treaty laid down the procedures for the formation of a provisional administration in Dublin pending the creation of an Irish Free State. This was duly done and on 14 January 1922 the Provisional Government was set up. It was to Michael Collins as head of that Provisional Government that Lord FitzAlan handed over the Castle, not, as Donal Kennedy would have it, to ‘an irregular junta’. It was symbolic of the ending of centuries of British rule and the creation of a legally constituted independent Irish state.—Yours etc.,
DENNIS KENNEDY
Belfast