DUBLIN COUNCILLORS WANT to resurrect controversial plans to rename Herzog Park in Rathgar and Diamond Park off Gardiner Street in the city centre.

Councillors on the city’s Commemorations and Naming Committee will this afternoon discuss the proposals. It’s not yet clear how long the process could take but People Before Profit councillor Conor Reddy said this afternoon that he hopes renaming can “move forward as soon as possible”.

It comes after the council’s chief executive dropped the Herzog Park proposal in December because the local authority does not have the relevant powers. The proposal had been heavily criticised, including by the Taoiseach and Tánaiste.

The change was proposed in protest against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and due to former Israeli president Chaim Herzog’s involvement in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine before and during the 1948 Nakba – the mass displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War.

A proposal to rename Diamond Park after 20-year-old Terence Wheelock who died in garda custody was also dropped for technical reasons.

The council committee is calling for clarity from Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, James Browne, on legislation allowing for the renamings to go ahead.

The issue is that existing legislation lacks specificity on how public ballots are to be held when a proposal from the Council is decided on by the public.

Councillor Dermot Lacey of the Labour Party said that existing legislation doesn’t account for whether or not a vote is held in person or not, or whether or not each household or each individual gets a vote.

Independent councillor Mannix Flynn told The Journal that if the committee is not satisfied with the progress Browne has made in changing legislation around the naming of localities in Ireland, he will propose legal action to be taken for delaying the “exercising our duty”.  

Reddy, of People Before Profit, suggests that the ability of the minister to make provisions on the council’s proposals has effectively “stripped the powers of the council”.

Reddy said: “We have the weakest councils in Europe. Local government has to mean something.”

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Dublin City Council has received legal advice on the matter which will be discussed at the meeting this afternoon.

The renaming of the park last December garnered international debate over whether Ireland should commemorate Chaim Herzog, the former president of Israel. The park, which was originally named Orwell Quarry Park, was renamed to Herzog Park, in 1995.

Reddy said the proposal has nothing to do with Herzog’s Jewish identity, highlighting that Estela Solomons, a Jewish, Dublin-born artist and Irish Republican who died in 1968, and Max Levitas, a Jewish, Dublin-born communist and anti-racist activist who died in 2018.

The committee is also set to discuss the application of a commemorative plaque of James  Connolly in Dublin 8 and a ceremony to mark the 85th anniversary of the North Strand Bombing.