 The question of the head of the Irish state from 1936 to 1949 was largely a matter of symbolism and had little practical significance.The UK response was to legislate that it would not grant Northern Ireland to the Irish state without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland (which was unlikely to happen in unionist-majority Northern Ireland).One practical implication of explicitly declaring the state to be a republic in 1949 was that it automatically terminated the state's membership of the British Commonwealth, in accordance with the rules in operation at the time.