ALL his life Christy Walsh wondered if it was true that his great-uncle, Patrick Downey, really was executed for refusing an order to put on his cap.

“My mother talked about it a lot and you’d ask yourself: ‘Can she be right?’ It just didn’t make any sense at all. But when the Freedom of Information Act came about and all the documents were available, I discovered that’s what happened.”

Mr Walsh is a member of a select band of Irish families who are seeking pardons from the British Government for their kin who, as serving soldiers in the Great War, were executed for desertion or insubordination — often for minor acts of rebellion.

The group has the support of the Irish Government, which last week published its own investigation into the fate of the 26 Irishmen shot at dawn during the First World War.

The atmosphere at the session of the Dail’s upper chamber was electric when Senator Martin Mansergh, a special adviser to three Irish prime ministers, disclosed that a forebear of his had passed the death sentence on Patrick Downey.

“There is shame on all involved,” Mr Mansergh told the chamber. “I am afraid to say that included a first cousin of my grandmother, a Captain Mansergh who presided over one of the worst cases, that of Private Downey from Limerick.

“I can only express the deepest regret to his family, including his great-nephew, for the little that is worth.”

Mr Walsh shook his hand after the debate. “I told him there was no need for him to apologise, he had done nothing wrong,” he told The Times. “But it’s important now to the Walsh-Downey family, on both sides of the Irish Sea, that the stigma be removed . . . On all the available evidence, he was murdered.”

Only one photograph survives of one of the 26 executed Irishmen. Rifleman James Templeton, from Belfast, was serving with the 15 Royal Irish Rifles when he was executed in March 1916. He had gone missing for three days. A brigadier general recommended that an example be made of him.

Patrick Downey, 19, was at Salonika, Greece, on December 1, 1915, when it was alleged that he had refused to fall in and put on his cap. Downey, who had a history of minor insubordination, admitted the charge in the belief that a guilty plea would lead to a lesser sentence.

The sentence passed by the court was agreed unanimously and the proceedings were referred to Lieutenant-General Sir Bryan Mahon, the commander of British Forces in Greece, who recommended the sentence as an exemplary punishment because of poor discipline in the battalion.

Downey was executed at Eurenjik, near the port of Salonika, on December 27.

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