Síle de Valera voters to give preference votes for Anti H-Block candidates in the 1981 general election, a comment which caused controversy. She held her Dáil seat until the 1981 general election, when the constituency boundaries were redrawn. She sought re-election in the new constituency of Dublin South. This caused tension within the local Fianna Fáil party, for one of the other candidates, Séamus Brennan, was a prominent opponent of Haughey. De Valera polled relatively well but narrowly failed to be elected, losing to another Fianna Fáil candidate, Niall Andrews. She contested the constituency again at the February 1982 general election, but saw
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