President of Dáil Éireann  The President of Dáil Éireann ( (), later also President of the Irish Republic) was the leader of the revolutionary Irish Republic of 1919–1922. The office was created in the Dáil Constitution adopted by Dáil Éireann, the parliament of the Republic, at its first meeting in January 1919. This provided that the president was elected by the Dáil as head of a cabinet called the Ministry of Dáil Éireann. During this period, Ireland was deemed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in international law, but the Irish Republic had made a unilateral Declaration of Independence on 21 January 1919. On 6 December 1922, after the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State was recognised as a sovereign state, and the position of the President of Dáil Éireann was replaced by that of President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State but, as a Dominion of the British Empire, King George V was head of state. The Irish text of the Dáil Constitution referred to the leader of the state as the . In English this was translated as both 'prime minister' and 'president of the ministry'. The term 'President of Dáil Éireann' was also used interchangeably with these terms, although this did not appear in the constitution. This was the title preferred by Éamon de Valera during his visit to the United States in 1920–1921. The president of Dáil Éireann was not its chairman, this was the role of a separate official: the . The Dáil Constitution did not provide for a head of state and the titles initially used suggested an official who was head of government only. In practice, de Valera, particularly when abroad, called himself "President de Valera", creating the impression that he was head of state. In August 1921, in the preparatory negotiations that would produce the Anglo-Irish Treaty, de Valera asked the Dáil to amend the constitution to upgrade his official status to that of head of state, in part to give him equality with George V in accrediting delegates to the negotiations. He also had the ministry restructured, with a number of offices downgraded from cabinet to sub-cabinet level. He also maintained that, as the highest official in the Republic, the príomh aire was the head of state and that an amendment would merely bring the language of the constitution into harmony with this reality.