This June, I had the privilege of travelling to Dublin through grants from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Franco Family Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts to conduct primary source research for my honors history thesis on the history of Irish neutrality. My thesis found its impetus through my internship last summer at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin, which was also made possible through a Nanovic Institute grant. During my internship, I worked in the Reconciliation Fund section on the Ireland, United Kingdom, and America (IUKA) desk. Established by the Irish Government in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, the Reconciliation Fund is one of many groups that work to maintain a peaceful society in Northern Ireland. Its main work consists of distributing grant funding to various community organizations which work to build connections between the Nationalist and Unionist communities in Northern Ireland, between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain.
"My experience emphasized to me the enduring legacy and consequences of partition and the fragility of the post-Good Friday Agreement peace process."
Although I had grown up visiting Ireland and had lived in London for the first nine years of my life, I had never before been to Northern Ireland. During my internship, I had the opportunity to travel to Northern Ireland multiple times to meet with the grant recipients, attend Irish government events, and see firsthand the divisions in the communities. My experience emphasized to me the enduring legacy and consequences of partition and the fragility of the post-Good Friday Agreement peace process. The next academic year, I found myself in the early planning stages of my history thesis, and I kept returning to the issue of Northern Ireland. Eventually, my focus centered on the defining feature of Irish foreign policy: the state’s neutrality. While practically all of Europe was swept up in World War II, Irish Taoiseach Eamon De Valera—seeking to emphasize the country’s nascent independence—kept Ireland neutral, despite intense pressure from the United States and Britain and even an offer from Churchill to support an end to partition if Ireland entered the war. After the war, the Irish government then unsuccessfully urged the United States to pressure Britain to end partition in exchange for Irish entry into NATO. My questions on this topic were myriad: Why had De Valera seemingly refused the greatest opportunity to end partition since 1921? Why had the Irish state been willing to negotiate an end to its neutrality in exchange for an end to partition after the war, but not during it? Why had pressure on the United States to end partition proved unsuccessful, despite the strength and size of the Irish diaspora in America? To what extent had the American foreign policy establishment soured towards Ireland, and why?
This summer, I set out to begin answering these questions by conducting primary source research at the University College Dublin (UCD) Archives and the Irish National Archives. I started at UCD, reviewing the University’s collection of the personal papers of Eamon De Valera, Minister for Foreign Affairs Frank Aiken, and Taoiseach John Costello (1948-1951). At the Irish National Archives, I examined official papers of the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
"Beyond the surface, however, my research indicated that public opinion was not as favorable towards Ireland as it once had been."
My initial focus was on the Irish-American community, both during the war and at its end. I examined the speeches made by De Valera, Aiken, and Costello during post-war trips to the United States, observing both how great the value the leaders placed on the Irish-American relationship was and how the leaders received warm welcomes at official events. Beyond the surface, however, my research indicated that public opinion was not as favorable towards Ireland as it once had been. Official meetings with President Harry Truman and State Department officials proved of little use to the Irish cause to end partition, and news reports often portrayed Ireland in a negative light for the nation’s conduct during the war. Examining the heart of Irish neutrality itself, I shifted through internal Irish government memoranda in which Aiken and others debated the possibility of NATO membership. While in more recent years, Irish neutrality has been framed as a policy of non-involvement for its own benefit, in its infancy, neutrality came about purely as a result of practical restraints. The Irish Government simply felt that it could not enter into a military alliance with the United Kingdom at the same time that it claimed that Britain was occupying part of its territory. Had partition not been an issue, it is highly likely that Ireland would have entered NATO.
As I move forward with my thesis, I hope to examine the relationship of neutrality to questions of Irish national identity and partition during other moments in Irish history, specifically in the context of Irish involvement in the United Nations and the European Union. I also plan to explore how this connection between neutrality and Irish national identity continues to shape Irish politics today. As demographic and political changes make a united Ireland a greater possibility in the coming decades and as Europe ramps up its defense apparatus to respond to the Russian threat, the issue of Irish neutrality might have to be reexamined in the future. Would the Irish public be willing to change its neutrality policy in exchange for reunification? If so, what would the accompanying increase in defense spending mean for the Irish economy? The entrenchment of neutrality into an aspect of national identity will certainly play a role in answering these questions. I am incredibly grateful for the Nanovic Institute and the Franco Family Institute for their support of my research this summer, and I look forward to continuing my work on my thesis this upcoming academic year.
Liam Kelly '25 is a Notre Dame student from Westport, Connecticut majoring in Political Science and History with a minor in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Liam competes in the Model United Nations club and works as a research assistant for the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. In the summer of 2024 he interned for the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin and is currently working on his senior honors history thesis on Irish-American relations in the aftermath of World War II.
Originally published by at nanovic.nd.edu on January 22, 2026.