Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 March 2024

Committee on Public Petitions

Decisions on Public Petitions Received

Photo of Martin BrowneMartin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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P00036/23 concerns the Invincibles reinterment campaign. The petitioner is Mr. Aidan Lambert. This petition relates to the National Graves Association.

It requests that the Government oblige the Office of Public Works, OPW, to carry out the necessary excavation works to recover the remains of Joseph Brady, Daniel Curley, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey and Timothy Kelly, in what is commonly known as the Invincibles Yard at Kilmainham Gaol. The bodies of these five members of the Irish National Invincibles lie beneath the paving slabs of the yard. They were executed there in 1883 for their part in the Phoenix Park assassinations. The families of the five men are represented by the National Graves Association and the wish of the families is for their relatives to be exhumed from Kilmainham Gaol and reinterred in consecrated ground at Glasnevin Cemetery.

The following councils support the Invincibles Reinterment Campaign, namely Dublin City Council, Galway County Council, Westmeath County Council, Wexford County Council, Cork City Council, Tipperary County Council, Louth County Council, Sligo County Council, Cavan County Council, Carlow County Council, Clare County Council, Mid Ulster District Council, Laois County Council, Limerick City and County Council, Fingal County Council, Cork County Council, Mayo County Council, Monaghan County Council, South Dublin County Council, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Waterford County Council, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Kildare County Council, Donegal County Council, Kerry County Council, Meath County Council and Wicklow County Council.

As we have said in the case of a number of petitions today, this has been shoved from one State body to another, with every excuse being given in respect of it. The recommendation is: that the correspondence from the petitioner be forwarded to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform for comment within 14 days; that the correspondence from the OPW be forwarded to the petitioner for comment within 14 days; that the correspondence from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage be forwarded to the petitioner for comment within 14 days; and that we write to the OPW and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to ask with whom they have liaised on this issue; and that we invite representatives of the OPW and that Department to appear jointly before the committee.