Although the Treaty was endorsed by the majority of TDs of the Second Dáil, republican legitimists argue that the vote was invalid as all TDs had, prior to their election, taken a solemn oath to defend the Irish Republic, and that people could not possibly express their true desires on the treaty, as the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George claimed that an "immediate and terrible war" would occur if it was not accepted.
Although de Valera had resigned as President of the Republic on 7 January 1922, and had not been re-elected on a very close Dáil vote two days later, a meeting of the IRA Army Executive at Poulatar, Ballybacon on 17 October 1922 adopted a proclamation "reinstating" de Valera as "President of the Republic" and "Chief Executive of the State".
[8] The 17 December 1938 issue of the Wolfe Tone Weekly carried a statement from a body calling itself the Executive Council of the Second Dáil.
Above this statement was an introductory paragraph written by Seán Russell announcing that on 8 December, the anniversary of the executions of the "Four Martyrs" (Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey) in 1922, the group had transferred what they believed was their authority as Government of the Irish Republic to the IRA Army Council.
The legalistic basis for this transfer of authority was a resolution of the First Dáil on 11 March 1921 in response to the arrest of many TDs during the Irish War of Independence.
In consequence of armed opposition ordered and sustained by England, and the defection of elected representatives of the people over the period since the Republican Proclamation of Easter 1916 was ratified, three years later, by the newly inaugurated Government of the Irish Republic, we hereby delegate the authority reposed in us to the Army Council, in the spirit of the decision taken by Dáil Éireann in the spring of 1921, and later endorsed by the Second Dáil.
This allowed it to present its declaration of war on Britain in January 1939 (see S-Plan) as the act of a legitimate, de jure government.
The supporters of the latter approached Tom Maguire, the last surviving member of the 1938 seven-member rump Second Dáil, who declared that the Provisional IRA was the legitimate successor to the 1938 Army Council and, as such, was the legal embodiment of the Irish Republic.
[11] The texts of the statements are as follows: And: In the years after the split, the Provisionals moved towards a complete cessation[13] of armed struggle, while Sinn Féin entered constitutional politics.
The party now contests elections to the Dáil Éireann and the Northern Ireland Assembly - "partitionist parliaments" in the legitimist view - and takes up the seats it wins.