Tánaiste tight-lipped on any State apology for Civil War executions

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has declined to comment on the possibility of a State apology for the execution of four anti-Treaty republican leaders during the Civil War.

Mr Martin had, at the weekend, unveiled memorials in West Cork to commemorate the centenary of the reinterment of the remains of Richard “Dick” Barrett.

Ballineen native Dick Barrett was 32 when he was executed on December 8, 1922, one of four anti-Treaty IRA soldiers executed in reprisal for the assassination the day before of TD Seán Hales as he left the Dáil.

The justice minister Kevin O’Higgins authorised the executions of four prisoners, Dick Barrett, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, and Joe McKelvey. According to legend each man was chosen to represent one of the four provinces, although none of the four men was from Connacht.

Dastardly

In the Dáil that evening, Labour Party deputy Thomas Johnson condemned the assassination of Seán Hales – “a horrible, dastardly thing” – and decried the executions as “murder most foul … bloody and unnatural”.

Dick Barrett was buried, initially, in Mountjoy Prison, but his remains were exhumed and reburied at Ahiohill Cemetery in 1924.

In 2022, on the centenary of the executions, Mr Martin, who was then taoiseach, echoed in the Dáil the words of Thomas Johnson, calling the murder of Seán Hales “a terrible crime” and denouncing the executions as “murder”.

On Sunday, Mr Martin unveiled a plaque and a bust of Dick Barrett in Ballineen, saying that Mr Barrett had been in prison when Mr Hales had been killed, and had let it be known he was strongly opposed to the targeting of pro-Treaty TDs.

“This is one of the many reasons why the decision of ministers to execute him in reprisal for the murder of Deputy Seán Hales was so vindictive and so wrong,” Mr Martin said.

Speaking to reporters in Cork on Monday, Mr Martin declined to be drawn on calls by Kevin Barrett, Dick Barrett’s nephew, for a State apology. “I’ve given my comments on that before and … I will further meet with Kevin again,” he said.