Calls to rename Cork city park named after bishop
Located on the Grand Parade and opened in 1985, the park is named after Bishop Con Lucey, who was the Catholic Bishop of Cork from 1952 until 1980. The park has been closed to the public since December 2023 for redevelopment.
"In my opinion this is not a matter of renaming a park, it's a new park deserving of a new name. When the new park opens it will bear absolutely no resemblance to the park that was there previously. A new park presents a unique opportunity to choose a name that reflects what we value as a city," Cllr O'Connor said.
The Social Democrats Councillor said the motion wasn't about committing to a name change for the park, but rather to undertaking a process to explore renaming it. 'Ultimately the people of Cork will decide the name of the park and that is exactly how it should be,' she said.
Due to reopen in November, the redeveloped park will include improved access to the historic city wall, a new events pavilion and plaza, improved access and seating for all, and a new tower to mark the eastern entrance.
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RTÉ News
8 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Who was the real Daniel O'Connell?
Analysis: from a fierce passion for civil rights and huge energy to anger, ego and vanity, an assessment of the Emancipator's strengths and flaws There's no doubt that The Great Emancipator had a trailblazing life. The Daniel O'Connell: Forgotten King Of Ireland documentary, directed by Alan Gilsenan and presented by Olivia O'Leary, re-assessed the life and times of O'Connell by travelling from Kerry to Glasnevin to Rome, to look at the contemporary legacy of O'Connell, the man that King George IV of England grudgingly called "the uncrowned king of Ireland". O'Leary was joined by various guests, including Prof Patrick Geoghegan, Professor in Modern History at TCD. In these edited excerpts from interviews for the series, Geoghegan discusses O'Connell's views on slavery, his approach to civil rights, his flaws, his tendencies to be a bully and what motivated him. Because he was so central to Catholic emancipation, that's the victory that stuck with him, but he had a sense of civil rights that went much wider that that. "Really it was a great civil rights victory because what he was doing was giving the vast majority of the people equal rights in the country. He believed in Jewish emancipation and he fought for Jewish rights in the British parliament. He believed in the emancipation of of African Americans who are being held in slavery in the United States and became one of the greatest champions of freedom for those people in the 19th century. From RTÉ One, Olivia O'Leary and Sinn Finn's Eoin Ó Broin debate the legacy of O'Connell "Many people disapproved of O'Connell's stance on slavery. Archbishops in America wrote to him. It wasn't that they were in favour of slavery, but they didn't believe that it was appropriate for an Irish politician to be lecturing the Americans on how they should run their own country. It was seen as inappropriate interfering "Some of the language O'Connell used was harsh and uncompromising. He said that George Washington was a hypocrite because he owned slaves and he said that he would never set foot on American soil because it was a contaminated country and he believed that slavery was a great sin and will have to be removed. "O'Connell's feeling on the slavery issue was personal. He had an empathy there that many other white abolitionists didn't have. He understood what it was like to grow up in a sense of feeling a sense of inferiority, feeling humiliated, feeling like you weren't equal in your own country. "The Irish condition wasn't as bad as the slave condition, but he knew what it was like to grow up with that humiliation and so he empathised with the slave mother, with the slave father, with slave children. He would move his audiences to tears when he would speak at anti-slavery rallies in the United Kingdom and in Ireland." From RTÉ Radio 1's Today With Miriam O'Callaghan, Olivia O'Leary on why the memory of O'Connell has been left to gather dust in a forgotten corner of Irish history When Frederick Douglass came to Ireland in 1845, he saw similarities with the plight of his own people "Yes, especially the horrible conditions of the peasants and of course this was a country about to go into a terrible famine, I suppose the big difference is that American slaves could be sold at any time and children be taken off their parents. That's the main difference with the peasantry in Ireland. "When O'Connell anointed Douglass as the black O'Connell of the United States, it was his way of saying that America needed a champion of freedom. It was his way of passing on that torch and was something Douglass never forgot. "Douglass mourned the fact that when O'Connell died, the Irish nationalist movement was taken over by people who supported slavery and who had expressed their ambition to go over and own a plantation with slaves, like John Mitchell. Whereas O'Connell was someone who made the walls shake when he denounced the slaveowners. O'Connell was someone who influenced the great men and women who campaigned for abolition of slavery." From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Myles Dungan on how a 1844 spell in prison did wonders for Daniel O'Connell's health and political reputation What were O'Connell's flaws? "He had a lot of flaws. I think part of the problem with O'Connell and the way he's remembered is that it's been very much a one-dimensional portrait of either the hero of Ireland, the saint who won Catholic emancipation or else the coward who bottled it at Clontarf. "The reality is that he was a much more complex figure. He was aggressive, he was aggressive in his language, he shocked his family, he shocked his friends, he shocked his opponents. Sometimes they'd have to intercept the newspapers so that his uncle Maurice wouldn't find out what he was saying in speeches. "But on the other hand, that was necessary to shake the Irish people out of their apathy and show that this was someone who was fighting for them. Sometimes it could extend over into bullying when it came to his own friends and supporters and there wasn't a close associate who he hadn't fallen out with at some point or another. "He had a huge ego and his vanity was legendary. When he would travel around the country in the 1830s, he would ask school children if they knew who he was and if they didn't, he'd say 'I'm the person who won your freedom'. When journalists would ask him who was the greatest person in Irish history he would say 'myself'. "He was terrible with money, he was always borrowing money and he was never saving money. He also wanted people to think he was the great chieftain living in the great house with the great carriage with the great estate in Kerry, the best clothes. "He couldn't afford these things at the time, his wife was furious about the carriage, Merrion Square. He couldn't tell the difference between public funds for his organisations, so there were always questions about whether he was using public funds for his own private dinners. "He could be a bully, liked things done his own way, insisted that his followers gave him complete allegiance. If there was ever a difference of opinion, he could fly into a furious rage. But very often, he would forgive people and give them a hug. I think he would have been a nightmare to work with because things could only be done one way and that was his." "I think he was just someone who was really one of these figures who only comes around once in a 200 or 300 year period" What do you think motivated him? Would he have been as energetic a character in a totally different situation? "I think sometimes you meet these figures who just seem to have boundless energy, I think he loved what he was doing and I think when you love what you're doing it doesn't seem like work. So he loved getting up at five in the morning and taking a shower - he installed this shower contraption in his house in Merrion Square. "But he loved going to the law courts and running rings around opposing counsels and intimidating judges. And he loved going to public meetings and campaigning for the civil rights and I think he he got so much energy out of the love and and welcome of the crowd. "O'Connell once said that whatever job you were given to do, you should always make sure you did it to the best of your ability. He used to boast 'if I was breaking rocks, I'd be the best breaker of rocks that ever lived', so he believed in doing a job to the best of his ability. "I think he was just someone who was really one of these figures who only comes around once in a 200 or 300 year period. Someone who has an incredible vision and energy and drive, some of it is driven by his own anger. The anger motivated him, that sense of humiliation, the anger at the way Catholics were being treated. "Some of it was the ego motivating him, but he had this incredible drive and determination. I think the depression in the later years was probably to do with the death of his wife and probably a despair about how things were going in Ireland."
RTÉ News
20 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Daniel O'Connell's legacy remembered on 250th birthday
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell, the man known as 'The Liberator'. Historians say his campaigns for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal in the nineteenth century laid the foundation for Ireland's independence. However, his philosophy of using non-violent protest to achieve civil rights has also had an international legacy. O'Connell is the most commemorated of all Irish historical figures with nine cities and town around the country naming their main streets in his honour, including the capital where his statue is given pride of place. "He took a people who were on its knees, and he convinced them that they were more than slaves," said Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Prof Patrick Geoghegan. O'Connell led a campaign for Catholic Emancipation to remove the Penal Laws which denied civil rights to the Catholic population. "Really, what these restrictions meant was that only a Protestant elite controlled the levers of power in Ireland. "O'Connell used to say that you could walk down any street in the country and you could recognise a Catholic because they wouldn't make eye contact with you. They would shuffle, they had bad posture, they were broken down, defeated, ashamed, demoralised," Prof Geoghegan said. He said O'Connell convinced the Catholic population that they deserved equality. "Through three decades of agitation, he raised them up, persuaded them to campaign for their own liberty and freedom, and forced the British government to concede emancipation," Prof Geoghegan said O'Connell then started a movement to repeal the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain with a series of so-called 'monster meetings' around the country. Prof Geoghegan said this movement "terrified" the British government and it finally acted to stop a rally in Clontarf in 1843 by sending in the army and two gunboats with orders to fire on the protesters. O'Connell cancelled the meeting, with the result that the Repeal movement lost its momentum and O'Connell lost a great deal of his stature as leader. However, Prof Geoghegan believes O'Connell made the right decision as he would otherwise be leading his people into a massacre. "It was a courageous decision. It reflected the principles that he had fought for all his life, and I think it was the right decision," he said. O'Connell's non-violent campaign for civil rights aroused interest from other countries in Europe and the rest of the world. "He was internationally renowned and internationally admired, from Australia to India to America," said Prof Christine Kinealy of Quinnipiac University in the US. Prof Kinealy said that O'Connell became a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery after he was elected to the House of Commons. This led to a visit to Dublin by escaped American slave Frederick Douglass, who addressed meetings in 1845 in City Hall and the Quaker Meeting House in Eustace Street. It was an incident between O'Connell and the US ambassador in London that captured Douglass' admiration, explained Prof Kinealy. Ambassador Andrew Stevenson was in the House of Commons and wanted to meet O'Connell and shake his hand. "And O'Connell refused and said to him publicly, 'I will not shake your hand. You are a slave breeder'. "You can imagine, the American ambassador was very angry. Challenged O'Connell to duel, which they didn't fight. "But this issue played out in the newspapers for months and months. It was debated in the American Congress, etc, and, of course, it polarised opinion. "But Frederick Douglass said, 'when I heard my master's lambast that Irishman, I knew I should love him because he defended the enslaved people'," Prof Kinealy said. US President Barack Obama referred to the meeting between O'Connell and Douglass when he addressed crowds in College Green in 2011. O'Connell also established Glasnevin Cemetery as part of his campaign for civil rights. As part of the penal laws, Catholics and dissenting Protestants had been denied the right of dignified burial, so there was a demand for a new cemetery in Dublin. Heritage Officer of the Dublin Cemeteries Trust Ultan Moran said: "O'Connell believed that fundamentally, everyone should be treated with equality in life, of course, but then, very importantly, in death as well. "He felt it was very important that we didn't limit the people buried here on their religion. He said, this is going to be a cemetery for people of all religions and none." From its establishment in 1832, the cemetery has grown from nine acres to 140 acres. A total of 1.5 million people have been laid to rest there. When O'Connell died in 1847, his followers built him a round tower and crypt "fit for a king", as Mr Moran described it. The monument was damaged in a suspected Loyalist bomb attack in 1971. Prof Patrick Geoghegan said O'Connell's reputation had suffered after the cancellation of the Clontarf meeting but was subsequently reappraised. When President Éamon de Valera opened O'Connell's home Derrynane, Co Kerry, as a museum in 1967, he admitted he had been wrong about him, said Prof Geoghegan. "He admitted that he and the revolutionary generation had hated O'Connell growing up, that they thought he was weak, that he should have gone ahead with Clontarf." "De Valera admitted that he and that generation had been wrong, because they would never have been able to achieve freedom if O'Connell hadn't achieved his great breakthroughs in the 19th century," he said. Prof Christine Kinealy, speaking of O'Connell's legacy internationally, said "I think his vision is really a north star for many people to follow that violence isn't always the answer, and equality independence, fairness can be achieved in other ways.
Irish Independent
20 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Letters: Medical episode showed me how much people from abroad enrich Ireland
On Monday, I ended up in the emergency department of University Hospital Kerry (UHK) with severe anaphylaxis, a life-threatening condition. In my case it was most probably caused by an insect bite. To the skilled and patient doctor in SouthDoc Tralee who told me I was very lucky, and the kindest physician ever in UHK who did not want to let me go home after my extended stay in his presence as he 'loved his job', I take my hat off to you both. These doctors were from south Asia, and Ireland is richer and nicer for having them here. Long may this continue. Tom McElligott, Listowel, Co Kerry In honouring 'Liberator', let us reflect on what he did for this country Daniel O'Connell, who was born on this day 250 years ago, spent a lifetime campaigning for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Act of Union. Catholic emancipation in 1829 ended many of the restrictions on Irish Catholics under the British penal laws. Irish Catholics could now receive an education and enjoy Irish culture. Once emancipation was achieved, O'Connell campaigned for repeal of the 1801 Act of Union, which had merged the Irish and British parliaments at Westminster. O'Connell sought an independent self-governing 32-county Ireland. It would be another 100 years before that aim was partially achieved. In the interim, Irish people continued to be persecuted for their Catholicism and nationalism. Even though O'Connell felt that Catholicism and nationalism were two sides of the same coin, he respected Irish people of all religions and none. In a High Court case against the crown for religious tolerance, O'Connell famously said: 'Every religion is good. Every religion is true to him who in his good caution and conscience believes it.' He maintained that if Protestants, Catholics, Presbyterians and non-believers stood side by side as Irishmen, the union would be repealed. Religious freedom and nationhood were hard-won by those who preceded us. I am indebted to O'Connell and all who suffered and died for God and for Ireland. ADVERTISEMENT O'Connell may be criticised for his vanity, promotion of pacifism over violence and use of English over Irish, but he has earned his reputation as The Liberator. He was a giant figure in the fight for civil rights and religious freedom in an all-inclusive Irish republic. Billy Ryle, Tralee, Co Kerry We shouldn't let facts get in the way when it comes to Donald Trump's beliefs The famous quote from Groucho Marx, 'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others', could be updated to a potential quote from Donald Trump: 'If you don't like my statisticians' results, I can fire them and get others.' Facts are facts. You can't improve them by getting someone else to announce them – not in a sane world anyway. 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