Twenty-first Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

The Twenty-first Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland introduced a constitutional ban on the death penalty and removed all references to capital punishment from the text. It was effected by the Twenty-first Amendment of the Constitution Act, 2001, which was approved by referendum on 7 June 2001 and signed into law on 27 March 2002.

The last execution in the Republic occurred in 1954 when the murderer Michael Manning was hanged, the sentence being carried out by Albert Pierrepoint who travelled from Britain where he was an official hangman. The penalty has been abolished in law since 1990. It is furthermore a condition of the membership of any country of the European Union that it abolish capital punishment. The Republic is also party to a number of international agreements forbidding the death penalty. These include Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights which forbids capital punishment even during time of war.

The Twenty-first Amendment was intended to give the state's long-standing abolition of capital punishment constitutional standing and prevent the Oireachtas (parliament) from reintroducing the penalty without a further referendum. In line with the state's commitment to abolition even during time of war, the Twenty-first Amendment provides that the death penalty cannot be imposed even during a "national emergency". This is the only explicit exception to the sweeping powers otherwise granted to the state during such an emergency. While the changes shown above are those made to the English-language version of the constitution, constitutionally it is the Irish text that has precedence.

The Twenty-first Amendment was introduced by the Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats coalition government of Bertie Ahern and was supported by every political party with representation in the Dáil (the lower house of parliament). It was submitted to a referendum on the same day as the Twenty-third Amendment, which permitted the state to recognise the International Criminal Court and was also approved by voters, and the failed Twenty-fourth Amendment, which would have permitted the state to ratify the Treaty of Nice but was rejected.

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