Madam, - I refer to the campaign in which the Government is participating to seek pardons for 26 Irish soldiers executed during the first World War.
Is it not the case that those who seek a pardon from another jurisdiction for Irish citizens fail to realise that the Irish people are sovereign and what that fact means? The Constitution clearly vests the power of pardon in capital cases solely in the President. There is significant case law where the Supreme Court has held that the State is the successor to former administrations. Were it otherwise, would we not now also be asking the British Government for pardons for those sentenced to death after the 1916 Rising?
Imagine An tÚachtarán Éamon de Valera asking Winston Churchill and the King of England to pardon his death sentence. And will An Taoiseach now add his predecessor, as well as his great hero Pádraig Pearse and those 15 others who were actually executed after the Rising, to the list? What a spectacle that would be! And what a spectacle it might well be when any person whose duty it is to give loyalty to the Constitution of Ireland takes out an injunction to set aside any mechanism that the British Government now finds to deal with the execution of those Irish soldiers.
Article 13.6: "The right of pardon and power to commute or remit punishment imposed by any court exercising criminal jurisdiction are hereby vested in the President, but the power of commutation or remission may, except in capital cases, also be conferred on other authorities." - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL HEERY, North King Street, Dublin 7.