Proposal to rename Herzog Park in Dublin not ‘legally sound’

A proposal to rename a park in Dublin named after an Israeli president is not “legally sound”, the city council has heard.

Lord Mayor Ray McAdam said regulations under legislation governing place names, which was changed in 2019, have not yet been made and “therefore there is currently no legal basis” for holding a ballot on the park’s name.

He said the report which proposed renaming the park did “not contain the information required for members to adopt a valid resolution” and should not have been included on the agenda for Monday’s meeting.

Mr McAdam said he was “annoyed, frustrated, fed up that this is now where we find ourselves”.

The council’s chief executive Richard Shakespeare apologised for the “administrative oversight” and said: “A detailed review of the administrative missteps will now be undertaken and a report furnished to the Lord Mayor and councillors”.

The park in Rathgar was named in 1995 after Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel between 1983 and 1993, who was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin.

His son Isaac Herzog is the current president of Israel and his father served as the first chief rabbi of Ireland.

Earlier on Monday, Ireland’s chief rabbi has said renaming the park would have been a “shameful erasure” of a part of Irish-Jewish history.

Yoni Weider said questions needed to be asked about how the proposal came forward.

He told RTE Radio that when Mr Herzog visited Ireland as Israel’s president in 1985, he was “welcomed with warmth” and there was “great pride in the fact that he was the only visiting head of state who spoke fluent Irish”.

The proposal to rename the park has been criticised by Irish premier Micheal Martin, Irish deputy premier Simon Harris and Irish foreign affairs minister Helen McEntee, as well as the Office of the President of Israel.