An emergency motion condemning the “interference” of Taoiseach Micheál Martin in plans to remove the name of former president of Israel, Chaim Herzog from a park in Rathgar, south Dublin, is expected to be heard at a Dublin City Council meeting on Monday night.
The council came under national and international pressure over the weekend to drop an item on the agenda for Monday’s monthly council meeting which called for the denaming of Herzog Park.
The park was named in 1995 in honour of Belfast-born Chaim Herzog, Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993, who spent his early childhood in Dublin when his father was chief rabbi of Ireland.
A recommendation by the council’s cross-party commemorations committee to remove the Herzog name from the park was be put to councillors for approval on Monday evening.
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However, on Sunday evening, council chief executive Richard Shakespeare said he was proposing to withdraw the item from Monday’s agenda and refer it back to the commemorations committee, because the correct legislative procedures had not been followed.
“On behalf of the Executive of the City Council, I wish to apologise for this administrative oversight. A detailed review of the administrative missteps will now be undertaken and a report furnished to the Lord Mayor and councillors,” Mr Shakespeare said in a statement.
The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Fine Gael’s Ray McAdam, said the council executive had “completely messed up” by allowing the item on the agenda.
“We cannot have a situation where reports are debated that are not legally sound,” he said. It is understood the name removal should have been subject to a public consultation and a ballot.
The Taoiseach was one of a number of public figures at the weekend to condemn the denaming proposal which he said was “divisive and wrong” and should be “should be withdrawn in its entirety” from the council agenda.
“The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as anti-Semitic,” Mr Martin said.
The Independent group of councillors on Monday afternoon submitted an emergency motion condemning the “unprecedented interference by An Taoiseach in the democratic process and reserved functions of Dublin City Council” which it said was “a breach of the operational independence guaranteed to local authorities under the Local Government Act 2001”.
The motion also condemns the “highly inflammatory and politically motivated implication by the Taoiseach that any member supporting the motion to change the park’s name is in any way motivated by or promoting anti-Semitism”.
It also calls on Mr Shakespeare to give an account of the timing of the intervention of the Taoiseach or any other any other Government department or official in the denaming issue.
Mr McAdam has indicated he will also the motion to be heard and the issue to be debated at the start of the meeting, even if, due to the legislative position, the denaming cannot currently proceed.
“The elected members should never be left in this position. Quite frankly there should have been much more homework done [by the executive],” he said.
Mr Martin was among a number of prominent figures to criticise the council’s proposal, including Tánaiste Simon Harris, the office of the Israeli president – Chaim’s son Yitzak – and Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder who said to remove the name “Herzog” from the park would be a shameful erasure of Irish-Jewish history.
Irish Sport for Palestine, which initiated the campaign for the name change in early 2024 and set up a petition signed by more than 5,600 people, said it was surprised by the “sudden outcry and opposition” given its campaign has been ongoing for almost two years.
The “administrative missteps” in applying the legislation are also expected to block councillors from naming a park after Terence Wheelock who died after a period of detention at Store Street Garda station 20 years ago when he was aged 20.
He died after being found unconscious in his cell with a ligature tied around his neck. At 2007 inquest a jury returned a majority verdict – four to three – of suicide. The Wheelock family have long rejected the inquest’s verdict and have campaigned for a public inquiry.
The same commemorations committee recommended the council rename Diamond Park, Dublin 1, as “Terence Wheelock Memorial Park”.
On Monday the Wheelock family said it was “extremely disappointed” the proposal was set to be removed from the agenda and would “continue to push for the change in the legislation to make sure that this renaming of the park from ‘The Diamond Park’ to ‘The Terence Wheelock Memorial Diamond Park’ is put into action”.
