{"id":169936,"date":"2025-12-01T22:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T22:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/169936\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T22:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T22:01:07","slug":"councillors-could-not-have-renamed-herzog-park-due-to-legislative-delay-meeting-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/169936\/","title":{"rendered":"Councillors could not have renamed Herzog Park due to legislative delay, meeting hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dublin<\/a> councillors could not have removed the name of former Israeli<\/a> president Chaim Herzog<\/a> from a park in Rathgar<\/a> because of a ministerial delay in providing regulations for the process, a council meeting has heard.<\/p>\n

Dublin City Council<\/a> came under national and international pressure over the weekend to drop an item on the agenda for Monday\u2019s monthly council meeting which called for the denaming of Herzog Park.<\/p>\n

The park was named in 1995 in honour of Belfast<\/a>-born Herzog, Israel\u2019s president from 1983 to 1993, who spent his early childhood in Dublin when his father was chief rabbi of Ireland. His son, Yitzhak Herzog<\/a>, is the current president of Israel.<\/p>\n

A recommendation last July by the council\u2019s cross-party commemorations committee to remove the Herzog name from the park was be put to councillors for approval on Monday evening.<\/p>\n

However, council chief executive Richard Shakespeare said on Sunday that he was proposing to withdraw the item from Monday\u2019s agenda and refer it back to the commemorations committee. He said this was because the correct legislative procedures had not been followed. <\/p>\n

Under 2011 legislation, which came into force in 2019, public consultation and a ballot are required to change a placename.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Who was Chaim Herzog, the Belfast-born Israeli president after whom a Dublin park is named?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Legal advice subsequently issued to the councillors by the council\u2019s law agent, Yvonne Kelly, on Monday states the Minister for Housing and Local Government James Browne \u201chas not yet made regulations\u201d for holding a ballot and \u201cuntil new regulations are made there is no legal basis for\u201d holding one under the statutory procedure.<\/p>\n

This means councillors could never have removed the name of the park because they did not have the power to conduct a ballot.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cif what was being proposed was legally sound\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was after this Mr Shakespeare confirmed with the council\u2019s law agent that the correct procedures had not been undertaken.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pride myself in getting the basics right,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cwe failed miserably to achieve\u201d them in this case. <\/p>\n

\u201cI take full responsibility for the systemic failure in this regard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Shakespeare said \u201cat no stage did I make or receive calls from national political figures or their advisers\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have to take the secretary general at his word that he was looking out for me,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018There is no necessity for it\u2019: Rathgar residents on Herzog Park renaming proposalOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

However, councillors agreed a motion condemning the \u201cinterference\u201d of Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> in the process. <\/p>\n

The Taoiseach was one of a number of public figures who at the weekend condemned the denaming proposal, which he said was \u201cdivisive and wrong\u201d and should be \u201cshould be withdrawn in its entirety\u201d from the council agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as anti-Semitic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The motion submitted by the Independent group on the council as well as Sinn F\u00e9in and People Before Profit councillors condemned the \u201cunprecedented interference by An Taoiseach in the democratic process and reserved functions of Dublin City Council\u201d. It said it was \u201ca breach of the operational independence guaranteed to local authorities under the Local Government Act 2001 \u201c.<\/p>\n

It also condemned the \u201chighly inflammatory and politically motivated implication by the Taoiseach that any member supporting the motion to change the park\u2019s name is in any way motivated by or promoting anti-Semitism\u201d. <\/p>\n

Others who criticised the council\u2019s proposal included T\u00e1naiste 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201csudden outcry and opposition\u201d given its campaign has been ongoing for almost two years.<\/p>\n

The \u201cadministrative missteps\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

At a 2007 inquest a jury returned a majority verdict \u2013 four to three \u2013 of suicide. The Wheelock family has long rejected the inquest\u2019s verdict and campaigned for a public inquiry.<\/p>\n

The same commemorations committee recommended the council rename Diamond Park, Dublin 1, as \u201cTerence Wheelock Memorial Park\u201d. The Wheelock family said it was \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d at Monday\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

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 \u201calternative ways we can commemorate the memory of Terence\u201d until the parks renaming issue was resolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin councillors could not have removed the name of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog from a park in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4501,93863,615,13288,61,60,3410,7116,1843,43,32860,92335],"class_list":{"0":"post-169936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-chaim-herzog","10":"tag-dublin","11":"tag-dublin-city-council","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-james-browne","16":"tag-micheal-martin","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-rathgar","19":"tag-yitzhak-herzog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}