WORK gets underway this month to remove the remains of executed prisoners from the grounds of Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.
The Department of Justice project will see them reinterred at a “suitable location” they confirmed today in a statement issued to alert the public that the work would now begin.
Over the next six to seven months the remains of some 29 prisoners are expected to be exhumed from the prison grounds.
They are all believed to have been prisoners who were executed between 1923 and 1954, with Harry Gleeson, the first person in Ireland to be granted a posthumous pardon, thought to be among them.
Mr Gleeson was executed in 1941 after being convicted of the murder of Mary McCarthy, a single mother of seven children who was found dead in a field on Mr Gleeson’s uncle’s farm in Tipperary.
The remains of Harry Gleeson, the first Irishman to receive a posthumous pardon, are thought to be among those being exhumedHe had maintained his innocence throughout his trial, and in 2015 President Michael D Higgins signed the order exonerating him of the crime.
The area being excavated at Mountjoy “may also contain the remains of a small number of prisoners executed prior to the foundation of the State” the Department confirmed today.
“Any remains discovered during the excavations, regardless of the date of the individual’s death, will be reinterred at a suitable location,” they added.
Anyone related to the persons whose remains are being exhumed who would like more information or to “have some involvement in this project”, is asked to contact Department of Justice at [email protected] .
“All communications received will be treated as confidential,” the Department confirmed.
