Ireland was dealing with a "capital punishment culture" in its appeal to the Governor of Texas to defer the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, told the Dail.
The Minister said he had sent a fax to the Governor of Texas, Mr George W. Bush, and through the Irish Embassy in Washington had contacted President Clinton about the execution which was expected to take place at midnight Irish time last night.
Mr Andrews was responding to a special notice question from Mr Gay Mitchell (FG, Dublin SouthCentral) and Mr Bernard Durkan (FG, Kildare North) about his efforts to stop the execution by lethal injection. Tucker was convicted of the pickaxe murder in 1983 of her former boyfriend and another woman in Houston, Texas.
Ms Liz McManus (DL, Wicklow) said the Minister should not take such a "laid-back approach" but should be more pro-active. She said the Oireachtas had previously backed a motion calling for a moratorium on capital punishment and that put an onus on the Minister to actively oppose the execution. She urged him to contact the US ambassador.
Mr Andrews said he would contact the ambassador but he rejected her comments that he was "laid-back". He pointed out that there was a "capital punishment culture" in the US. Some 3,300 people in America were on death row, including six women.
Since 1976, 144 people have been executed in the US including 37 last year in Texas. The executions in Texas accounted for half of the total last year and 70 per cent of people surveyed in the US last year wanted to retain capital punishment on the statute books.
Mr Mitchell said it was "barbaric" that poison would be injected into Tucker's veins. She would be the first woman in a long time to be executed and this would set a precedent for a whole new stream of executions, he said.