National monument to be protected

Last night Dublin City Councillors voted in favour of this emergency motion (see below). Here is a situation where a State body, the OPW, whose role it is to protect national structure and heritage items, showing blatant disregard for the Garden of Remembrance.  The OPW's primary purpose is to ensure the protection of such monuments, yet having known that the Garden of Remembrance was not listed as a protected structure, instead of remedying this it had engaged in the process to completely undermining the integrity of this site by attempting to shoehorn a preposterous tunnel and water feature as a memorial to those that have experienced institutional abuse in this State. This whole action was aided and abetted by Dublin City Council and their lack of care of duty in ensuring that this particular site, the Garden of Remembrance, was protected under the record of protected structures.  It is ironic that the very monument they wanted to impose on on this site was to atone for their neglect and their lack of care for the children of this State.  Strange, or not strange, that same lack of care, and failure to protect was very evident with their disregard for the National monument site which they failed to protect in the first instance. However, Dublin City Councillors, came, albeit a bit late, to the rescue. Hopefully this ill conceived fake piece of 'architorture' will not find its place at the Garden of Remembrance.  The whole issue of a memorial to those who have experience institutional abuse and abuses in their childhood need greater public debate and engagement if we are really going to examine an appropriate way to deal with this issue.

In the meantime, it is premature and needs to be deferred or stopped entirely until the issue, that is, the global issue of child sexual abuse and other abuses of children in which Irish priests, clerics and religious orders were involved throughout the world have emerged, been given due examination and truth established.  Finally, a national memorial, is a serious issue for any society. Lets give this issue due regard.

Please sign the petition.  

 

Emergency Motion passed in Dublin City Council December 3rd 2012

With an impending decision by Dublin City Council planning department of a planning application for the building of a memorial to victims of institutional abuse on the site of the Garden of Remembrance and having regard to the national significance of this site as a memorial to the men and women who gave their lives to the cause for Irish freedom, we call on Dublin City Council to initiate a proceedure to declare this site a protected heritage structure of National importance. We also call on Dublin City Council to include the site as an architectural conservation area. At present this important national site is without protection in that it is not included on the Dublin City Council’s record of protected structures, nor is it included in a statutory architectural conservation area.