LAST UPDATE | 8 Jul 2025

LEINSTER HOUSE IS to unveil a statue of Daniel O’Connell later this year as planning kicks off for commemorations for the 250th anniversary of the former Irish political leader’s birth.

The statue is to be donated by Bank of Ireland, which offered the statue to the Houses of the Oireachtas for public display in 2023, to mark the bank’s 240th anniversary. The statue was transferred earlier this year.

The statue was created by Andrew O’Connor. O’Connor was an American-born sculptor who was born in Massachusetts in 1874. 

Daniel O'Connell sculpture by Andrew O'Connell. Bank of Ireland Bank of Ireland

He died in Dublin in 1941 at the age of 67 and is buried in Glasnevin cemetery.

Among other works, Andrew O’Connor is better known on this side of the Atlantic as the creator of the tripartite sculpture of Christ the King. 

The sculpture was hidden in Paris throughout WWII to avoid being melted down, and was transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949. It has recently been restored and now stands on a promontory adjoining the dlr LexIcon library.

O’Connor presented 26 of his later works to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. 

The statue of O’Connell, whose name now marks Dublin’s main thoroughfare, was created by O’Connor in 1932. Daniel O’Connell, hailed in his time as ‘The Liberator’, was born in August 1775. The Kerry man was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin after securing the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829.

The Act meant that Irish Catholics could become members of parliament. Daniel O’Connell is buried in Glasnevin cemetery, where his sculptor later rested.

The unveiling of the statue is one of many forms of commemoration planned to mark 250 years since the birth of O’Connell.