Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 5 February 2025
332. Deputy Brian Stanley asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to respond to the request by an organisation (details supplied) to have the remains of the five executed Invincibles exhumed form the yard in Kilmainham Gaol; if his Department and the OPW will facilitate this in order that they can be reinterred in Glasnevin Cemetery; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3096/25]
View answerKilmainham Gaol, National Monument 675, opened in 1796 as the new County Gaol for Dublin and closed in 1924. Today the building symbolises the tradition of militant and constitutional nationalism from the rebellion of 1798 to the Irish Civil War of 1922-23. Leaders of the rebellions of 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867 and 1916 were detained and in some cases executed here.
Requests such as this are of a very sensitive and delicate nature and there are a number of matters to consider, both in terms of the significant practicalities involved and the ethical issues. While the general area of the site of graves in Kilmainham is relatively well known, there is no detailed plan showing definitively exactly where individuals were interred and even were it to be precisely located, there would be practical issues involved in positively identifying the remains.
Were the OPW to possess the power to institute such a move (which it does not, given the responsibility of the Minister for Heritage under the National Monuments Acts), it would still likely be of such delicacy as to require being considered at the highest levels of Government.
