proposed, to the fury of the Irish delegation. Alexander, who was of Northern Irish descent, placed loyalist symbols, notably a replica of the famous Roaring Meg cannon used in the Siege of Derry, before an affronted Costello at the dinner. Shortly afterwards, while still in Ottawa, Costello announced that his government would introduce a bill that would unambiguously make Ireland a republic. Costello biographer David McCullagh has suggested that it was a spur of the moment reaction to offence caused by Alexander at the dinner, although the cabinet members at the time claimed that the decision had already been made and was announced early because it had been leaked to the Sunday Independent. The evidence of what really happened remains ambiguous. The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 At any rate, The Republic of Ireland Bill was soon introduced into the Oireachtas. In the debate in the Seanad Éireann in December 1948 on the law, Costello argued that the bill would make the President of Ireland the Irish head of state. de Valera's party, the main opposition in the Dáil at the time, did not oppose the bill, and it passed quickly. The Act contained three major provisions: it repealed the External Relations Act; it provided that the description of the state was the Republic of Ireland; and it provided that the external relations of the state would henceforth be exercised by the President. The Act came into force on 18 April 1949, Easter Monday, to commemorate the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which had been read by Patrick Pearse at the beginning of the Easter Rising on Easter Monday 1916. Soon after President Seán T. O'Kelly signed the act into law, he commemorated his new status as the clear and unambiguous Irish head of state with state visits to the Holy See and France. A visit to meet George VI at Buckingham Palace was also provisionally planned, but timetabling problems with the president's schedule prevented the meeting. One practical implication of explicitly declaring the state to be a republic in 1949 was that it automatically led to the state's termination of membership of the then British Commonwealth, in accordance with the rules in operation at the time. However, on 26 April, just days after the Act came into effect, the Commonwealth issued the London Declaration, which allowed India to remain within the Commonwealth while becoming a republic. The formula used