21st Amendment Abolition of the Death Penalty / Arguments Against

The 21st Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 2001 proposes to amend the Irish Constitution to allow for the deletion of references to capital punishment and the prohibition of legislation allowing capital punishment in the future.

The proposed amendment seeks to change separate provisions of the Constitution. The combined effect of these changes would be to delete all remaining references to the death penalty in the Constitution and to prevent its re-introduction under any circumstances, even where there is a state of emergency.

This statement of the main arguments for and against this proposal is published by the Referendum Commission having regard to submissions made to it by the public in response to advertisements.

The arguments should be read in conjunction with the earlier explanatory leaflets published by, and available from, the Referendum Commission .

The Commission expresses no opinion as to the comparative merits of these arguments and there is no significance in the order in which they are printed.

Consider them and decide before you vote on the 7th June.

Arguments against

You should vote NO to this proposal because:

The death penalty is already removed from statute law and it would be a serious mistake not to allow for it to be reintroduced by the Oireachtas in the event of armed rebellion or a major terrorist activity endangering the safety of the State.

It should be retained in order to show society's abhorrence for certain types of offences such as serial killing or the murder of Gardaí.

There are some crimes, such as mass murder, that are so appalling that the only appropriate punishment is death.

The discontinuance of the death penalty is the main reason for the increased incidence of murder and other serious crimes and the retention of it as a possibility would be a deterrent which could save some lives.

Before removing the death penalty, we should ensure that there are long sentences for serious crimes; there should be actual life for murder.

We need tougher anti-crime laws generally. Removing the possibility of capital punishment is sending the wrong signal about our intentions to fight serious crime.