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The Constitution gave the state a new public vocabulary. Article 4 named it Éire, or Ireland in the English language; the head of government was now the Taoiseach rather than President of the Executive Council. Articles 2 and 3 expressed a national claim to the whole island while recognising that, pending reintegration, the laws enacted by the Oireachtas applied only to the twenty-six counties. That distinction mattered greatly. The Constitution articulated an all-Ireland aspiration, but it did not alter the authority of the Northern Ireland government at Stormont or the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.
The defining event came on 22 July, when W. T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council, formally opened the Shannon Scheme at Parteen, near Limerick. Water was admitted from the intake works into the headrace canal leading to the generating station at Ardnacrusha. The scheme had been built for the Free State by the German firm Siemens-Schuckertwerke and involved a dam, diversion works, canal, turbines, transmission lines and a new organisation of national electricity supply. It was an immense undertaking for a state still only six years old, and it advertised a determination to use public infrastructure to overcome the disadvantages of a small, overwhelmingly agricultural economy.
