The Meeting of the Third Dáil
Cosgrave appoints a cabinet as follows: Cosgrave – President and Minister of Finance; Desmond Fitzgerald – Foreign Affairs; Ernst Blythe – Local Government; Patrick Hogan – Agriculture; Joseph McGrath – Labour, Industry, Commerce and Economic Affairs; J.J. Walsh – Postmaster General; Eoin MacNeil – Education; Home Affairs – Kevin O’Higgins; Richard Mulcahy – Defense; and two ministers without portfolio – E. J. Duggan and Finian Lynch. There were objections to Mulcahy holding both Minister of Defense and C-in-C but he was soon replaced as C-in-C by Sean McMahon. Circulars to the press ordered that the government should be referred to as ‘The National Government’ and not ‘The Provisional Government’ and that the Republican opposition, of all shades, should be known as ‘Irregulars’.