Although the Garda Síochána prosecuted a number of persons under section 1.1(d) in 1925 and 1926, the Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, believed that such serious charges were not 'desirable in the present conditions'.
[citation needed] Rather more bluntly, in March 1930 Eoin O'Duffy, the Garda Commissioner, wrote that the prospect of charging IRA members with 'levying war against the State' or with usurping executive authority would make a 'laughing stock' of the Gardaí.
[citation needed] The Criminal Justice Act 1964 abolished capital punishment in the Republic of Ireland generally, but retained it for treason and several other crimes.
[7] The Criminal Justice Act 1990 abolished the death penalty completely and set the punishment for treason at life imprisonment, with parole in not less than forty years.
[2] In 2010, in the context of the Irish financial crisis, the Green Party introduced a private member's bill to define the crime of "economic treason" in the Constitution.