Republicans like Ruairí Ó Brádaigh said that the only legitimate country in Ireland was the Irish Republic declared in 1916. They said the legal government was the IRA Army Council because the last remaining anti-Anglo-Irish Treaty deputies of the Second Dáil made them the government. (Adams agreed to this idea of republican political legitimacy until quite recently - however in his 2005 speech to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis he rejected it.)