The Irish Republican Police (IRP) was the police force of the 1919–1922 Irish Republic and was administered by the Department for Home Affairs of that government.
Foundation
The IRP was founded between April and June 1920 under the authority of Dáil Éireann. It was initiated by Richard Mulcahy the IRA Chief of Staff, and Cathal Brugha, Minister for Defence. It was handed over to the Minister for Home Affairs Arthur Griffith and later to his successor Austin Stack. Simon Donnelly, an IRA Staff Officer at GHQ, was transferred to the Department of Home Affairs as Chief of Police. At this time there were only six full-time Republican Police in Dublin city. Donnelly immediately instructed that a paid full-time policeman be appointed to each of the seventy-two IRA Brigade areas. They were chosen by the Brigades, and most though not all were IRA volunteers. The purpose of the IRP was to provide security for the Republican Courts, to enforce their judgements, to put into effect the Decrees of the Dáil and to maintain general order. It also occupied itself with such mundane matters as enforcing licensing regulations, dealing with theft and maintaining street patrols. From a propaganda perspective, as with all the institutions of the Irish Republic, it sought to put into effect secession from the United Kingdom. More specifically, the existence of the IRP was considered an important component in the campaign to undermine the authority of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
In 1920, the IRP had a presence in 21 of Ireland's 32 counties. In June 1920, the Irish Bulletin claimed that the IRP had arrested 84 criminals in 24 counties within 13 days.
Functioning
The IRP faced considerable difficulties in enforcing its authority. It was viewed as an illegal and subversive body by the Dublin Castle administration and IRP members at times came into conflict with Crown forces. In one instance, IRP members James Cogan and Harry Sheridan arrested a suspected cattle thief named John Farrelly on 22 July 1920 in Clonsilla. When the commandeered motor vehicle they were using to transport Farrelly encountered a British Army checkpoint, a brief shootout occurred which killed Cogan and wounded Sheridan and Farrelly. During and briefly after the Irish War of Independence, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) repeatedly challenged the Dáil Courts and threatened its judges with prosecution.
The operation of the IRP was also made difficult by some confusion regarding the separation of civil and military structures during the Irish War of Independence. For individual volunteers, their military role as members of the Irish Republican Army and their police function in the IRP were not always clearly differentiated nor was this difference always obvious to the general public. The IRP had no permanent jails or prisons in which to confine suspects and offenders. Despite this obvious limitation in a system of criminal justice, improvised solutions were found to detain prisoners. Some of those convicted by the Republican Courts were expelled from the area and even from the country. In one incident, three offenders who had been banished by a Republican Land Court to an island off the coast of County Clare for three weeks refused to be rescued by the RIC declaring that as citizens of the Irish Republic, the RIC had no jurisdiction over them. Abandoned buildings in isolated areas were also used for detention, as in the case of a former barracks in the Nire Valley deep in the Comeragh Mountains. A suggestion by the Chief of Police that "incorrigible criminals" should be flogged was turned down by his superiors as "a barbarous form of punishment".