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Military
Deployments & Exercises
Over the course of 1946, the Irish Naval Service undertook an extensive series of deployments in conjunction with the Royal Navy, designed to increase the INS's level of training and strategic flexibility. In February 1946, Irish motor torpedo boats deployed to Harwich in Britain for Exercise Channel Dash, a five-week series of joint training and exercises with their British counterparts. In spring, the Irish submarine squadron, supported by the fleet tender Meath, deployed to Malta for three months during Exercise Maltese Falcon in order to gain experience with Mediterranean conditions. The final exercise of the year, Oriental Blossom, saw the Irish flagship, the cruiser Granuaile, join the British Royal Navy's Second Heavy Cruiser Squadron in Singapore for a period of three months. This is the first time an Irish warship has operated outside Europe. INS leadership indicated that further exercises of this nature may follow in 1947. The Irish Naval Service also conducted Orion 45 (in May 1945) and Orion 46 (in May 1946), a joint antisubmarine exercise with the Marine Nationale.

In April 1945, the LÉ Aisling, one of the two Maeve-class ocean patrol ships, made three port calls in Iceland. In June 1946, the destroyer LÉ Aoife made a port call to Bergen and Copenhagen, while the LÉ Eithne visited Portsmouth and Le Havre in September of 1946.

Development Programs
Grúpa Thionscal Éireann (GTÉ) continued marketing the MICA armoured infantry carrier over the course of 1945 and 1946, taking a pair of demonstrator vehicles to Britain, Poland, the Baltic States, and the Balkans. The British Army ordered two hundred MICAs in 1945 for use in external territories such as Palestine, while the Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince of Monaco purchased four vehicles for emergency policing duties. Interest from the Danish and Bulgarian armies was reportedly quite high, but no orders for either army were logged in 1946 due to financial constraints.

Although GTE was discouraged by the lack of foreign orders for the MICA, the company undertook a further military development project with input from the British Army, Royal Marines, and the Irish Army Corps. The company developed the TACT (Tracked Amphibious Cargo Transporter) using a set of both Centurion tank parts (primarily tracks and running gear) as well as off-the-shelf equipment. Construction of prototypes began in fall of 1946.

The Irish Army additionally began testing a Centurion Mk.II tank in the fourth quarter of 1946. Initial tests appeared favorable, although the Army specifically noted the major drawback of the Centurion's very heavy weight. The demonstration vehicle was officially purchased in December, and Army leadership indicated that they intended to buy up to five more vehicles in 1947 in order to form an independent heavy armoured platoon attached to the Irish Armoured Regiment.

Meanwhile, the Irish Air Corps started construction of Kilmacthomas Aerodrome, which is being built to ease the congestion of military aircraft at Casement Aerodrome. Work started on April 19th of 1945, and the runway and hangers were declared operational by October 12th.

The D.A.F. Ro(W)XVI Ronne flying boats used by the Fisheries Service were retired in early 1946, while the number of Sunderland flying boats used by the Air Corps for maritime patrol dropped to four. The Air Corps additionally gave serious consideration to retiring the Boulton-Paul P.94 fighters and attempt to purchase more Fw.190s, but ultimately decided to keep them in service until the end of 1947, permitting the Air Corps to investigate a possible jet fighter purchase at that time.

Industry
Universe Tankships, a company founded in 1944 to manage transporting oil from the Middle East to Europe, entered operation in early 1945 with its first imports.

Bord na Móna (Peat Board) was founded in 1946.

In 1946, the first Heatons department store entered operation.

Politics
The Clann na Poblachta ("Children of the Republic") party was founded in July of 1946 by former Irish Republican Army Chief of Staff Seán MacBride. The party appealed to disillusioned young and primarily urban voters who felt greater emphasis needed to be placed upon social issues.

The Question of Independence
One of the principle political questions facing the Dail remained the ever-sensitive topic of Ireland achieving full independence from Great Britain. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Irish state acted completely independently (going so far as to name itself in official documents 'the Republic of Ireland'), but legally retained the English king as official head of state; this maintained a tenuous connection with the British empire that pro-independence groups wished to sever. Fine Gael and its leader, Taoiseach Desmond Myles, began officially discussing a "Republic of Ireland Act" in order to address this issue, but no official legislation was put forward until late 1946. At that time, leaders within the Dail disagreed about the text of the proposed document, and after a long and accrimonious debate, the matter was shelved until 1947.

The delays seriously weakened public perception of Myles' leadership of Fine Gael and some political observers believed he would be forced out of party leadership as a result. However, strong economic news from 1946 helped maintain an overall positive rating.

Striking the IRA - In February of 1945, IRA gunmen kidnapped a British policeman who was visiting Dublin to discuss border security with the Irish government. Although the policeman escaped several hours later by jumping out of the kidnappers' moving van, the incident was a severe embarassment to the Irish government and Taoiseach Desmond Myles. The kidnappers, nicknamed the Dublin White Van Men by the popular press, were arrested four days later. In June, another group of four IRA gunmen broke into the house of the prison warden, holding his family in an effort to break out the White Van Men and several other IRA prisoners. Seven individuals managed to get free, but two hours later four of them, as well as two of the gunmen, were recognized and recaptured while they were ordering dinner at a nearby pub. The remaining three escapees, as well as the remaining two accomplices, were arrested the following morning when they attempted to board the ferry for France.

Over the remainder of 1945, the Garda Síochána responded with a series of minor actions against the IRA. Only two arrests were made during this period, but the Garda uncovered a stash of small arms at in August 1945, and another cache of explosives in September. In December, the Garda, acting on information received from the American FBI, intercepted a series of eight wire transfers worth a hundred thousand British pounds that were bound for IRA coffers. In June 1946, the Garda raided an IRA safehouse just outside Dundalk, arresting four conspirators and uncovering bomb-making components.

In July, four IRA members, including one of the Dundalk Four, attempted to escape from prison by commandeering a laundry van. The attempt ended in failure. Several weeks later on September 20th, another escape attempt was engineered in conjunction with outside accomplices, who attacked a prison transport taking the Dundalk Four to court for their official sentencing. The Garda anticipated a rescue attempt and attached a pair of armoured carriers from the Army, crewed by members of the Irish Ranger Wing, as an auxiliary escort. During a ten-minute gunfight between the Irish Rangers and the IRA attackers, three IRA gunmen were killed and seven more wounded and captured, while one prison guard and one ranger were wounded. Within hours, the Garda arrested seventeen more IRA members, including the group's chief of operations and two other senior leaders. The result was known as the Infirmary Road Shootout or "the Black Thursday of the IRA".