On 7 January 1922, it ratified the Anglo-Irish Treaty by 64 votes to 57 which ended the War of Independence and led to the establishment of the Irish Free State on 6 December 1922.

[n 1] The Second Dáil responded favourably to the proposal from King George V on 22 June 1921 for a Truce, which became effective from noon on 11 July 1921.

The Truce allowed the Dáil to meet openly without fear of arrest for the first time since September 1919, when it had been banned and driven underground.

During the Second Dáil the Irish Republic and the British Government of David Lloyd George agreed to hold peace negotiations.

As President of Dáil Éireann (Príomh Aire, or literally First Minister) Éamon de Valera was the highest official in the Republic at this time but was notionally only the head of government.

On 14 September 1921, the Dáil ratified the appointment of Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Robert Barton, Eamonn Duggan and George Gavan Duffy as envoys plenipotentiary for the peace conference in England.

The ratification specified by the Treaty was by "a meeting summoned for the purpose of the members elected to sit in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland".

Under the terms of the Treaty, a Constituent Assembly was to be elected to draft a Constitution for the Irish Free State to take effect by 6 December 1922.

[9] The Dáil resolution also approved a pact agreed by Collins and de Valera in a vain attempt to prevent the Treaty split leading to Civil War.

De Valera during the Civil War, and other republican theorists in later years, argued that the Second Dáil remained in existence as the legitimate parliament of a continuing Irish Republic.

[11][14] In both cases, TDs wanted to guard against a breach in continuity which would happen if the old Dáil had been dissolved but the envisaged election then failed to occur because of a deteriorating security situation.

A few symbolic secret meetings of the continuing "Second Dáil" were attended by anti-Treaty TDs, the first in October 1922 appointing a republican government under de Valera.

[17] De Valera came to power in 1932 and in 1937 proposed a new Constitution which was adopted by plebiscite, removing to his own satisfaction any remaining reservations about the state's legitimacy.