Éamon de Valera on a formal coalition agreement, something de Valera was unwilling to concede. However, while Fianna Fáil was six seats short of a majority, it was still by far the largest party in the Dáil, with 37 more TDs than the next largest party and rival, Fine Gael (the successor to Cumann na nGaedheal). Conventional wisdom held that de Valera would remain Taoiseach with the support of independent deputies. However, this was brought undone when the other parties realised that if they banded together, they would have one seat fewer than Fianna Fáil, and would be able to form a government
Éamon de Valera law, for use in representing the Irish Free State at diplomatic level. With the implementation of the new constitution, named in Irish as "Bunreacht na hÉireann" (meaning the Constitution of Ireland), the title ultimately given to the president was "President of Ireland" (Uachtarán na hÉireann). The constitution contained reforms and symbols intended to assert Irish sovereignty. These included: Criticisms of some of the above constitutional reforms include that: As Bew concludes, in the constitution of 1937, de Valera was "trying to placate left-wing Republicans with national phrases and pious people with expressly Catholic bits [and] patriarchal Catholicism." Éamon de Valera