Mr Gay Mitchell TD yesterday handed in a letter to the US embassy to protest against the continued use of the death penalty there.
Mr Mitchell, the chairman of the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Human Rights, said the US would soon execute the 500th prisoner since 1976. He said most states did not have the death penalty before that date, and that a test case then resulted in it being introduced in many states.
There were 3,300 people on "death row" in the US, including 46 women. The most likely 500th execution would be of Louis Joe Truesdale jnr in South Carolina.
The Dail rights sub-committee had written to protest against the continued use of the death penalty to the US government and Congress through the US embassy.
Some statistics on the US death penalty would indicate why the committee was concerned, he said. A total of 58 juveniles had been sentenced to death and nine had been executed as "ex-juveniles".
In the 1970s and 1980s the numbers were small, with one or two executions a year - but in 1997 this had risen to a record 74. In fact, in the six years to the end of 1997, the average number of executions was 46 per year.
Of the 499 people executed to date, 145 were in Texas, followed by 46 in Virginia, 39 in Florida. Of those executed to date, about 65.6 per cent had died from lethal injection, 30.9 per cent were electrocuted, 2.07 per cent were gassed and less than 2 per cent were either hanged or shot.
In 13 states the families of victims were allowed attend the execution.
"We enjoy warm relations with the US and that is how it should be but friends must be able to speak freely to each other," he said.
To try to help to bring about change, the Human Rights SubCommittee would invite representatives of those US organisations which were seeking change to address the committee in the near future, he said.