Dublin council chief insists no 'national political figures' pressured him to drop Herzog Park plan

LAST UPDATE | 9 mins ago

THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE of Dublin City Council has said that he was not placed under pressure to drop the renaming of Herzog Park by “national political figures or any other advisers” as the row grew into an international storm over the weekend.

Richard Shakespeare apologised to councillors that a motion had made its way from the council’s naming committee to the full council for adoption, even though it was not technically legal.

Shakespeare also offered a full apology to the family of Terrence Wheelock who had been expecting to see Diamond Park in Dublin’s north inner city renamed after the teenager, who died in garda custody 20 years ago.

The council chief said he had “failed miserably” to get the basics right in ensuring that the council was set to rename the Rathgar park in the correct manner, but insisted he had not faced any untoward pressure from senior politicians.

“There was no pressure – soft, hard or otherwise – brought to bear,” Shakespeare said.

However, Shakespeare said he did receive a phone call on Saturday evening from the senior civil servant in charge of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, who had asked Shakespeare whether the Herzog Park name change would have been legal.

For it to be legally sound, a public consultation and a plebiscite would need to be held as part of the process to rename any park.

Shakespeare recounted a “remarkable” sequence of events as he discovered that the measure would not been legal, due to changes introduced in 2019.

He said this began at 7pm on Saturday evening when the Secretary General of the Department of Housing phoned him enquiring “if what was being proposed was legally sound”.

After Shakespeare checked legal advice that had been given previously, Shakespeare said he feared that the council had walked themselves “into a legal problem” if it had tried to change the name at present.

But the chief executive’s explanation was met with scepticism by a number of councillors.

Sinn Féin’s Ciaran Ó Meachair asked “how often does the secretary general ring the chief executive to enquire if a motion is legal”, while Independent Pat Dunne said there “wouldn’t have been a telephone call from the secretary general” if the only motion up for discussion was the plan to rename Diamond Park.

“I wouldn’t say it was an intervention by the secretary general. He asked me a question,” Shakespeare told the chamber. “I thought we were okay and then I found out we weren’t.”

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Independents accuse Taoiseach of ‘chilling political intimidation’

Earlier, Independent councillors who had sought to change the name of Herzog Park in Dublin have hit out at what they called the Taoiseach’s “interference” in the debate, as they reaffirmed their intent to proceed with the renaming at some point in the future.

The group of eight Dublin councillors described Micheál Martin’s intervention against the plan to remove the name of the Irish-born Chaim Herzog as a “chilling form of political intimidation and an abuse of power” over local councillors.

And they have sought an independent report on Micheál Martin’s intervention against the plan to change the park’s name, which they say will, “when appropriate”, proceed at a later date.

Herzog served as the sixth president of Israel, but a plan to remove his name from a park in Rathgar drew intense criticism from Israel and around the world in recent days.

The Taoiseach had said that scrapping the name would erase the Jewish community’s “distinctive and rich contribution to Irish life”, and would “be seen as antisemitic”.

Last July, a Council committee voted overwhelmingly to remove Herzog’s name, but a statement yesterday from Dublin City Council chief executive Richard Shakespeare confirmed that he was proposing that the report be withdrawn.

However, the councillors behind the original motion are now bringing an emergency notion before the Dublin monthly city council meeting this evening to “categorically condemn” the Taoiseach’s public statement demanding the withdrawal of the park name change proposal.

Independent group leader councillor Cieran Perry said they’re viewing the Taoiseach’s actions as a “direct and unacceptable breach” of the independence meant to be accorded to council members over the changing of names in their locality.

“The Taoiseach’s intervention is a serious and alarming overreach,” Perry said.

“Local authorities are explicitly established as independent corporate bodies, and placename changes are a reserved function for the elected members of the Council.

We cannot and will not allow the head of government to dictate the outcome of a legitimate, democratic debate on this internal matter.

The original motion had been condemned by Israelis and members of the Jewish community in Ireland as antisemitic.

In the councillors’ statement today, Perry said this evening’s emergency motion “rejects the inherent suggestion that any Councillor supporting the motion is in any way motivated by or promoting antisemitism”.

Fellow Independent councillor and former lord mayor Nial Ring said the motivation behind the removal of Herzog’s name was as an “act of political solidarity” following Israel’s war in Gaza.

Ring said that to “conflate our political stance with any suggestion of antisemitism is a cynical attempt to shut down the democratic debate as well as slander our reputations” in the process.

“To have this come from the Taoiseach of our country is, in our opinion, a betrayal of democratic principles, a chilling form of political intimidation and an abuse of power that demands immediate public repudiation,”, fellow Independent Councillor Nial Ring said.

“The Taoiseach’s behaviour is an exact replica of the cynical tactics usually employed by the Israeli Government whenever it seeks to silence any form of criticism” he added.

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