Fr Jeremiah Roche, a Kiltegan missionary priest, had worked in Kenya for almost 41 years when he was murdered by intruders at his home on the outskirts of Kericho about 320 kilometres from Kenya's capital Nairobio.
At the subsequent trial of three men for his murder, Kipng Bett, Jackson Cheruiyot Koskei and Joshua Maranga Makori were sentenced to death for Fr Roche's murder while two other men were given 14 years hard labour.
However Fr Roche's family pleaded for mercy for the three men saying that their deaths was not what Fr Jerry would have wanted.
However speaking this week Fr Roche's niece, Anne Cunningham, said that the three men on death row that are unlikely ever to be executed.
“We haven't heard anything directly but as far as we know it is not going to happen. I don't think they have actually carried out a death sentence in Kenya since 1987. We are glad, because this is what we wanted all along. Jerry would not have wanted to see any more lives lost.”
Fr Roche, who was 68 years of age at the time of his murder, was very popular in his home village of Athea in West Limerick.
Ordained in 1968, he was a regular visitor to his home parish and had planned to retire there a year after his murder.
He had just begun renovating a cottage there in the last summer he was home.
After his murder, his remains were flown home and he was interred in the Holycross cemetery in the village, with the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Irish born Cardinal Keith O'Brien among the celebrants at his funeral mass.
After his murder the people erected a bronze bust of Fr Roche to commemorate the second anniversary of his murder.
They have also produced a commemorative DVD.