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LAST UPDATE | 8 Jul
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.
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.
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A fitting tribute to one of Ireland’s greatest political minds. Daniel O’Connell believed that true power came not from violence or wealth, but from moral courage and the ability to uplift others. His legacy, securing Catholic Emancipation through peaceful means, still resonates today. As his statue takes its place at Leinster House, it’s a timely reminder that real leadership is measured not in titles, but in the freedoms won for future generations.
@Rafa C: he went down the road if peace because he believed violence would not succeed. It had nothing to do with him being a peaceful man .
@Jack Moss: and the prize for thickest comment of the day has a winner.
@Jack Moss: Can you support that in any way?
@Jack Moss: Yeah fair enough, he wasn’t some saintly pacifist but that’s kind of what makes it more impressive. He looked at the landscape, saw that violence wouldn’t work, and still managed to rally millions and change the system through sheer force of will and strategy. He proved peaceful resistance could actually get results, long before that was seen as a real option. That’s a legacy in my book.
@Brendan O’Brien: He was called out over an insult he made against Dublin Corporation and challenged to a Duel . He accepted the offer and killed a man . Hardly the actions of a man of peace .
@Jack Moss: It was normal by the standards of the time: even British prime ministers fought duels. O’Connell regretted his action and paid a pension to the dead man’s daughter until his death.
It would be unfair and ahistorical to judge him in general based on that one incident.
@Jack Moss:
In context:
Conversely, many believe this was the event that influenced his unwavering commitment to non-violent political action.
He shot D’Esterre in the hip and he died 2 days later.
He was devastated after it and never forgave himself.
He financially supported D’Esterre’s wife and child after that.
He would even fast on the anniversary of the duel as a personal act of penance.
@Jack Moss: you’re utterly clueless.
@Fergus O’Donnell: He’s not actually and its a breath of fresh air for 2 posters of equal knowledge of a topic to actually debate, rather than people like you indulging in petty childish insults as you haven’t a clue about the topic.
@Rafa C: why is there always one that wants to lecture us
A photo of the statue might have been a good idea.
https://onlinecollection.hughlane.ie/objects/1374/daniel-oconnell
@honey badger: Totally agree that an image would have been helpful. Thanks for the link.
@honey badger: There is one!! Specksavers??
@Ollie Fitzpatrick: I commented around half three. The article was updated 37 minutes ago. Guess what happened 37 minutes ago…
Bring back the £20 note.
Come on everyone! Let us judge someone who was born a quarter of a millennium ago by the standards of today.
@Ronan Mc: I think O’Connell would still stand up pretty well.
@Ronan Mc: Excellent post
Michelle Keane does nor represent me
@Michael: I don’t think she knows herself. This hijacking of our country flag is so annoying. She doesn’t represent me either.
What about one for Margo as well?
Is there not enough statues through the city of Dublin already
@John McEvoy: Aye! Agreed! Tis bad enough we have to put up with a dose of “the halfsies” (neither with or of the Irish, nor fully with the Brits’ Colonial agenda) all over Dublin City, taking up prime Plinths that should be for **the indigenous Irish who were vehemently and wholly committed to the cause of Ireland, born to no British Silver Spoon, and bearing NO allegiances whatsoever to the Brits – the foreign Occupying Power**
Sinéad O’Connor herself deserves far more than a single solitary cold rigid statue in Dublin.
I see no reason why the likes of *tri-faith* Sinéad shouldn’t get a street-long, 3D Holographic, interactive, *permanent* visual installation project reflecting the WHOLE complexity and diversity, friendliness and warmth, that was Sinéad.
A *living* “statue”.
A perpetual motion tribute.
Permanently fixed into the central median of O’Connell Street.
@Pink Freud: What drugs you on?
A man of peace that killed a man in a Duel.
@Jack Moss: Yes, that is well documented.
O’Connell was a great advocate of freedom and opponent of antisemitism and slavery.
@Jack Moss: Some lad took 2nd hand offense to a comment about Dublin corpo. Ended up getting shot in the groin. Died 2 days later. Not ideal.
@Brendan O’Brien: Except when it mattered most, according to Fintan.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/culture-shock-in-saving-jews-from-the-nazis-hubert-butler-saved-ireland-from-shame-1.2076949
@honey badger: That article says nothing about O’Connell. You should read comments before replying to them.
@Brian D’Arcy: He wasn’t in Ireland when he saved these lives, and wasn’t representing the country. A great man nonetheless.
@Jack Moss: you really don’t like it when people stand against your crown jack
Interesting!!!!he was quite bigoted in many ways, maybe not without cause but it continued after emancipation.
@Margaret and Kevin Dunne: Nothin’ worse than this dose of “the halfsies”. Half in and half out of the Irish Struggle for Freedom. Land Thieves the lot of them! Essentially *BRITS* serving the Colonial Empire but with enough self-interest to recognise that the Irish were coming for them all (yet again) AND they themselves could have more Political Power for themselves if they could Govern Ireland (**for Britain** mind!) from/in Dublin, far more than the zero Power they had while relegated to remaining in Ireland and further away from the seat of Power in London than even anyone at the furthest north end of the British island.
Yet we laud them, a little bit, for seemingly “doing their bit” towards increasing the liberation of the Irish people (in teency-wincy tangibly-insignificant increments)
The most fitting tribute would be to un-name the kip of a street currently named after him. Rename Grafton Street after him.
@Ben dover: Absolutely not. Grafton is the absolute HEIGHT of Protestant-like Brit Privilege and the absolute NOTIONS that go with it.
It is literally occupied and colonised by FOREIGN W.A.S.P. businesses!
Catholic Emancipation was for the lowliest, most impoverished, most dis-empowered and powerless populations within Ireland.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon Dublin City Council AND the National Government AND the Catholic Church in Ireland to ensure that O’Connell Street perpetually reflects the ethos and efforts of Daniel O’Connell and the (very slow, and still incomplete, path to whole) Irish Emancipation.
Including the unmolested and unobstructed inclusion of non-catholic Charities doing Charity works on, near, and within O’Connell St and surrounding areas.
And, of course, the greater lifting and improvement of Quality of Life for all those living and working within and nearby O’Connell Street.
@Ben dover: We should change a lot of street names. That are the remnants of imperialism and colonialism, George’s street, Henry street, Grafton street, Dorset street etc etc. A lot of institutions still use ‘royal’ in their titles. What many describe as elitism and snobbery. Ireland must be one of the least sovereign countries in Europe. Even Russia went through a de stalinization process. Trying to change Russias reputation,dismantling the reminders of Stalin’s tyranny and dictatorship. Yet, we hold onto these remnants of oppression and dictatorship.
Hes in the widest street in Europe. He doesnt need a another one. Hes grand
What’s laughable about that is that it’s in Leinster house and NOT available for all to see. Another waste of money
What sort of waste-of-space waste-of-money tomfoolery is this?!
Utterly idiotic nonsense.
Why would you commemorate the BIRTH of anyone, ever? Nobody’s birth is any kind of “great achievement” fer gawd sake!
But even more especially prime dullard activity when the Commemoration of the first step in the **Emancipation** from Colonial Sectarian Legislative Apartheid is just 4 bledy years away like.
Ffs lads. Somebody somewhere PUHLEEZE bring an INJUNCTION (ffs) against any and ALL Public Bodies/Departments/Public Representatives involved in, AND against any and ALL expenditures and activities planned for, Daniel O’Connell’s BIRTH …”commemorations”…. (brain and eye spraining >EYE ROLL< ) in 2025.
@Pink Freud: That’s the best anti-Christmas argument I’ve ever come across!
….2/2…
…and can we please get Fassbender into a role for a film abt (Colonial Sectarian Catholic Oppression and….) Emancipation, *AS* O’Connell?
>:)
We’ll have to plug him back into Kerry though for a couple of years before hand, to get him *fully marinated* back into a reeeeel THICK Kerry accent (without any of the Saoirse Ronan type non-hiberno’ acquired linguistic faux pas from abroad [or, possibly, the husband in her case?], such as the likes of saying “he is stood” aka illogically conflicting tenses and context. Not that there has been any evidence of that, with him, as yet. But ya never know what might need to be “purged from the filters” from foreign linguistic exposure).
(how, though, to remove the Germanness of his features to better highlight and bring home the Irishness needing to be portrayed by a non-mixed purely Irish character? I mean, Daniel O’Connell had a proper thick “agricultural” head on him)
All that said though…. it is not beyond probability that Fassbender, or many other Irish Actors, would potentially be staunchly averse to playing the precarious role of someone who, yes, DID achieve (a degree of) *Legislative* Catholic Emancipation (not real, or applied, or permanent) in Ireland ….but who did so in a **FOREIGN** Parliament with the FOREIGN Laws of the Colonial Oppressor and was, therefore and just as Roger Casement also was, ***A Collaborator, A Sympathiser, An Apologist*** for British presumed Racial and Sectarian Supremacy.
Albeit not out-and-out totally devout to the Colonial Project, or the Eugenics behind and driving the Colonial Projects, themselves.
Both in Ireland.
And Africa.
And elsewhere.
@Pink Freud: Ease up on the psychedelics.
Still dead set on commemorating the Normans though
SWOP OUT PARNELL..? USELESS .. IN HINDSIGHT..
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