which we now experience as a result of our present policy of insisting on the title 'Eire' as against Dublin's preference for 'Ireland.'" Hence, the Ireland Act formally provided the name Republic of Ireland for use instead of the name Eire in British law. Later the name Eire was abolished entirely in British law under the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1981. This has meant that the Republic of Ireland is the only name for the Irish state officially provided for in domestic UK law. Notwithstanding the Ireland Act 1949, the British government would often continue to refer to the Irish state by other names such as the Irish Republic or Southern Ireland. A good example of this was in the Treaty of London, 1949. The UK government had been centrally involved in preparing the treaty which was signed in London and established the Council of Europe. The treaty consistently describes the Irish state as the Irish Republic. Opposition leader, Éamon de Valera, queried this. The Minister for External Affairs, Seán MacBride, responded that he agreed "that the description is not possibly as accurate as we would have liked it to be". Yet he also said that the term Irish Republic was used in the treaty "in a general sense in the way the country is described; French Republic, Irish Republic, Italian Republic, Kingdom of the Netherlands and so on." However, leading opposition politician, Frank Aiken, was not satisfied with this response. Speaking in the Dáil, Aiken cited article 26 of the treaty where "the names of the countries are given as "Belgium", "Denmark" and "France", not "Republic of France" or "French Republic"" noting that "one would expect that the next thing one would find would be "Ireland", but instead we have "Belgium, Denmark, France, Irish Republic, Italy, Luxembourg" and so on. Aiken remarked that some British MPs wanted "to popularise the name Irish Republic". He asked the Taoiseach, John Costello to clear up "what exactly is the name of this State going to be in international documents, international agreements and matters of that kind." Aiken expressed the view that "We want to keep up the name given in the Constitution, "Ireland", in order to show that our claim is to the whole island of Ireland and in international documents, in my opinion, the State should be alluded to as "Ireland" or the "Republic of Ireland"." The following month the Minister