Frank Aiken intelligence in New York City and London in return for £500 a month. The pact was originally approved by Aiken, who left soon after, before being succeeded by Andrew Cooney and Moss Twomey who kept up the secret espionage relationship. Aiken was at the April 1925 Commemoration ceremony at Dundalk, but by March 1926—when De Valera founded a new party, Fianna Fáil—he was in America. Aiken was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin candidate for Louth in 1923; in June 1927 he was re-elected there for Fianna Fáil, continuing to be re-elected for that party at every
Sinn Féin Bank founding council comprised George W. Russell, Arthur Griffith, and P. T. Daly. In 1910 it purchased headquarters at 6 Harcourt Street for £575, leasing the upper floors to the Sinn Féin party, from where the "Sinn Féin" newspaper was edited. A contemporary wrote, "we do not envy the man who has the job of persuading [nationalists] that the new Sinn Fein bank (which we take it will be established without complying with the requirements of British law) is a secure nest for his savings as the Bank of Ireland". When the First Dáil proclaimed an Irish Republic in 1919, it