 I don't say it is an ideal arrangement, but if our policy is, as has been stated, a policy of non-coercion'.However he told the Northern Divisions of the IRA in private, early in 1922 that, ‘although the Treaty may have seemed as an outward expression of partition, the [Provisional Irish] Government plans to make it [partition] impossible…even if it meant smashing the Treaty’.Collins' Provisional Government also funded county councils and paid the salaries of teachers in Northern Ireland who recognised the Free State.