Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 November 2014
228. Deputy Pat Rabbitte asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if the Office of Public Works is in a position to provide the number of famine victims buried at Kilmainham, Dublin 8; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42953/14]
View answerThere are 63 recorded deaths in Kilmainham Gaol in the relevant Famine period. It is not clear however that any of these deaths are directly attributable to famine causes and cannot therefore be definitively described as such. While the figure would seem low compared to the number of deaths throughout the country at the time, it possibly reflects that, bad though the conditions were in the Gaol in the 1840s, they still offered subsistence levels of food and shelter which at least kept inmates alive while the population outside the Gaol was sustaining much higher mortality rates.
The Office of Public Works (OPW) has no information in relation to interrals within the Gaol in this period, though there are, clearly, graves on the Kilmainham site which have arisen because of the various executions that took place there. We cannot therefore with any assurance of complete historical accuracy ascribe any of the deaths at the Gaol during this period exclusively to the Great Famine.
