Boundary Commission Final Recommendations 03.December.1925
On this day in 1925 the Boundary Commission issued its final recommendations for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. After much delay and negotiation following the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, it was not until November 1924 that the commission met for the first time. The committee comprised of Eoin MacNeill (representing the Irish Free State), J. R. Fisher (representing Northern Ireland), and South African Supreme Court Justice Richard Feetham (for Britain), who was also the chairman. In the summer of 1925 the commissioners retired to London to write their eagerly anticipated report.
However, a leak in the British Morning Post newspaper on 7 November 1925 suggested that the commission would recommend only minor alterations to the existing border. For the Irish government the leak was deeply troubling as it also suggested that the commission's report would recommend that the Free State cede territory to Northern Ireland. The disclosure led to the resignation of Eoin MacNeill as Irish boundary commissioner on 20 November. As a result, negotiations between the Irish, Northern Irish, and British governments were held to find an impasse. By an agreement signed in London on 3 December 1925 by representatives of the three governments, the Boundary Commission was revoked and its report shelved. The border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland remained as it had stood since partition in 1920. A week later the agreement came before Dáil Eireann and passed, by seventy-one votes to twenty, after a heated debate. The finalised agreement was later lodged with the League of Nations as an international treaty.
Source: www.irishnewsarchives.com / Irish Independent, 4 December 1925, page 7
