Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, 1946

The Department of Social Welfare.

3.—(1) The Government may by order appoint a day to be the appointed day for the purposes of this section, and in this section the expression “the appointed day” means the day so appointed.

(2) On the appointed day a Department of State to be styled and known as An Roinn Leasa Shóisialaigh or (in English) the Department of Social Welfare shall stand established.

(3) The Minister who has charge of the Department of Social Welfare shall be styled An tAire Leasa Shóisialaigh or (in English) the Minister for Social Welfare.

(4) The following enactments, that is to say, the Ministers and Secretaries Acts, 1924 to 1939, and the Act of 1925, shall apply to the Department of Social Welfare and the Minister having charge thereof as if that Department had been established by section 1 of the Principal Act.

(5) For the purposes of subsection (1) of section 6 of the Amending Act of 1939, the Department of Social Welfare and the office of Minister for Social Welfare shall be deemed to have been established immediately upon the passing of this Act, but any order which is made, in relation to that Department or that Minister, under the said subsection (1) before the appointed day, shall not be expressed to come into operation on a date earlier than the appointed day.