the Statute of Westminster 1931. These amendments removed references to the Oath of Allegiance, appeals to the United Kingdom's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the British Crown and the Governor General. The sudden abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936 was quickly used to redefine the royal connection via the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936. Nevertheless, the Fianna Fáil government, led by Éamon de Valera, still desired to replace the constitutional document they saw as having been imposed by the UK government in 1922. The desire to replace the Constitution of the Irish Free State was motivated largely by the association of the existing constitution with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and a belief that it had been imposed upon Ireland by the government of the United Kingdom. The main opponents of the Treaty had been elected to power as Fianna Fáil under Éamon de Valera in 1932, and a commitment was made to replace the constitution of the Free State. So closely tied to the policies of Fianna Fáil was the proposed new constitution that the 1937 referendum has been described as a vote of confidence in the republican government. After a new constitution was drafted by John Hearne, supervised by de Valera, the draft was accepted by the Oireachtas. The Oireachtas passed the Plebiscite (Draft Constitution) Act 1937, which allowed for a plebiscite to be held so that the people of Ireland could either accept or reject the new constitution. The second motive for replacing the original constitution was primarily symbolic. De Valera wanted to put an Irish stamp on the institutions of government, and chose to do this in particular through the use of Irish-language nomenclature. Drafting process De Valera as President of the Executive Council personally supervised the writing of the Constitution. It was drafted initially by John Hearne, legal adviser to the Department of External Affairs. De Valera served as his own External Affairs Minister, hence the use of the Department's Legal Advisor, with whom he had previously worked closely, as opposed to the Attorney General or someone from the Department of the President of the Executive Council. He also received significant input from John Charles McQuaid, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, on religious, educational, family and social welfare issues. The text was translated into Irish over a number of drafts by a group headed by Micheál Ó Gríobhtha (assisted by Risteárd Ó Foghludha), who