Seán Lemass Irish Free State, the legitimacy of the Dáil, and its abstentionist policy of refusing to sit in the Dáil, if elected. However, the effort was unsuccessful and in March 1926, however, de Valera, along with Lemass, resigned from the party. At this point, de Valera contemplated leaving public life, a decision that would have changed the course of Irish history. It was Lemass who encouraged him to stay and form a political party. In May, de Valera, assisted by Gerald Boland and Lemass, began to plan a new party. This new party became known as Fianna Fáil – The Republican
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