Dublin councillors could not have removed the name of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog from a park in Rathgar because of a ministerial delay in providing regulations for the process, a council meeting has heard.
Dublin City 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 Herzog, Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993, who spent his early childhood in Dublin when his father was chief rabbi of Ireland. His son, Yitzhak Herzog, is the current president of Israel.
A recommendation last July 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, council chief executive Richard Shakespeare said on Sunday that he was proposing to withdraw the item from Monday’s agenda and refer it back to the commemorations committee. He said this was because the correct legislative procedures had not been followed.
Under 2011 legislation, which came into force in 2019, public consultation and a ballot are required to change a placename.
Legal advice subsequently issued to the councillors by the council’s law agent, Yvonne Kelly, on Monday states the Minister for Housing and Local Government James Browne “has not yet made regulations” for holding a ballot and “until new regulations are made there is no legal basis for” holding one under the statutory procedure.
This means councillors could never have removed the name of the park because they did not have the power to conduct a ballot.
Mr Shakespeare told the council meeting he had been contacted by the secretary general of the Department of Housing at 7pm on Saturday evening to ask “if what was being proposed was legally sound”.
It was after this Mr Shakespeare confirmed with the council’s law agent that the correct procedures had not been undertaken.
“I pride myself in getting the basics right,” he said, adding that “we failed miserably to achieve” them in this case.
“I take full responsibility for the systemic failure in this regard.”
Mr Shakespeare said “at no stage did I make or receive calls from national political figures or their advisers”.
“I have to take the secretary general at his word that he was looking out for me,” he added.
However, councillors agreed a motion condemning the “interference” of Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the process.
The Taoiseach was one of a number of public figures who at the weekend condemned 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,” he said.
The motion submitted by the Independent group on the council as well as Sinn Féin and People Before Profit councillors condemned the “unprecedented interference by An Taoiseach in the democratic process and reserved functions of Dublin City Council”. It said it was “a breach of the operational independence guaranteed to local authorities under the Local Government Act 2001 “.
It also condemned 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”.
Others who criticised the council’s proposal included Tánaiste Simon Harris, the office of the Israeli president 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 early last year, 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 also blocked councillors from naming a park after Terence Wheelock, a 20-year-old who died after a period of detention at Store Street Garda station 20 years ago.
At a 2007 inquest a jury returned a majority verdict – four to three – of suicide. The Wheelock family has long rejected the inquest’s verdict and campaigned for a public inquiry.
The same commemorations committee recommended the council rename Diamond Park, Dublin 1, as “Terence Wheelock Memorial Park”. The Wheelock family said it was “extremely disappointed” at Monday’s development.
Councillors including Lord Mayor Ray McAdam apologised to the Wheelock family, as did Mr Shakespeare. Mr McAdam said he would meet the family in the coming days to seek “alternative ways we can commemorate the memory of Terence” until the parks renaming issue was resolved.
