Later this year the execution chambers at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin will be torn down as part of refurbishment work at the prison.
The timing is appropriate, coming soon after next month's referendum to remove the death penalty from the Constitution.
By international standards the chambers built at the start of the last century were comparatively little used. Since the Civil War, more than 40 people have been put to death by the State, the vast majority of these executions taking place in Mountjoy. Of those executed, 30 were people whose crimes were not political in character. But all the cases involved murder, and the body of each person executed in Mountjoy was buried in the prison grounds, according to Tim Carey's book, Mountjoy: The Story of a Prison.
Some political prisoners were shot during the Civil War, and in the 1940s three men were shot in Mountjoy for IRA activities.
Two men were shot in Portlaoise Prison, and one in the Curragh Camp during the 1940s.
The last person to be hanged in the State was Michael Manning on April 20th, 1954, for the murder of 65-year-old nurse Catherine Cooper in Limerick. Manning, a 25-year-old carter, admitted to the killing when he was questioned by gardai. Evidence was given during his trial that there was a history of insanity in his family.
Those hanged came from various parts of the State including Dublin, Limerick, Roscommon, Wexford, Galway and Kerry. Two men from outside the State were executed including James Leham from Canada and James Gambon from Liverpool.
Only one woman was executed after the foundation of the State, although a separate hangman's quarters were built in the women's section of Mountjoy. Annie Walsh was put to death on August 5th, 1925, some 45 minutes after her nephew Michael Talbot was hanged. Both were from Limerick and had been convicted of the murder of Annie's husband, who was some years her senior.
The State never had its own executioner, but would request the services of British hangmen when death sentences were pass ed. Members of the Pierrepoint family carried out hangings in Mountjoy.
Albert Pierrepoint was given the task of training a prospective Irish hangman, whose identity remains a mystery.
This Irish hangman never carried out an execution, which may have been due to what Pie rrepoint, in his autobiography, considered the man's lack of suitability for the job. "When I first took him into the execution chamber his face went as white as chalk," Pierrepoint wrote.
All death sentences passed since Michael Manning's execution in 1954 have been commuted.
A similar trend against capital punishment emerged in other European states.
Prof William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway, said this began with the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 which recognised the right to life. The human rights movement began, sparking campaigns to remove the death penalty from statute books.
The Republic's distaste for capital punishment might also have been due to its status as a former colony, which often consider the death penalty oppressive, according to Prof Schabas.
"There continued to be a distaste for what was seen as repression. Easter 1916, Roger Casement, all these people were executed," he added.
The Republic's activities as a member of the UN and the Council of Europe was also a factor in the move away from capital punishment.
In the 1970s, when the a death sentence was passed on Noel and Marie Murray for the murder of a garda, a new wave of opposition to the death penalty began. Dr Pauline Conroy, who was involved in the campaign, recalls that there was shock and alarm among people who thought such a punishment would never be used again.
The execution chambers remain part of Mountjoy Prison. They are adjacent to the D-wing, and consist of a two-storey building with white, stone walls on the inside. A black, wooden floor separates the two storeys and the glass roof overhead illuminates the upper floor.
Those awaiting execution were kept in cell D1, which now houses the Church of Ireland's room in Mountjoy. Prisoners walked onto the second floor of the hangman's chambers from their cell and stood beside the black wooden trap door on the floor as their feet were bound and the hood and rope placed over their heads.
They were steadied by prison officers on the trapdoor and when the key was taken out of the door, a lever to the locks was pulled back and the door would open.
A priest, after praying with the condemned person, would walk down the short stairs as the door opened to bless them.
Prison officers on the bottom floor would use a moveable, wooden, black stairs to steady the body as it fell and would pass it up to the doctor on the upper level who would pronounce the prisoner dead.