Conor Reddy on judicial review case: "Ordinary Dubliners should decide who is honoured in this city"

The High Court action brought by several Dublin City councillors against the Minister for Housing and Local Government has been adjourned until October.

The group of Dublin City councillors initiated the lawsuit against the housing minister due to the absence of clear regulations governing how councils can rename public spaces.

The legal challenge targets the blocked renaming of Diamond Park in Dublin 1, which was proposed to honour Terence Wheelock, and Herzog Park in Rathgar, currently named after the former Israeli president Chaim Herzog.

The effort follows the council's chief executive dropping the Herzog Park proposal in December because the local authority lacked the necessary powers.

“Herzog was not just an Israeli President; he was centrally involved in the original ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” said Councillor Conor Reddy. “He joined the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary force in the British Mandate period, and was later directly involved in military campaigns that forcibly emptied Palestinian towns and villages. These facts aren’t controversial; they are well-documented history.”

The Rename Herzog Park Campaign was launched by Irish Sport for Palestine and 1815 Football Club in 2024.

A separate proposal to rename Diamond Park in memory of Terence Wheelock, who died in Garda custody, was also abandoned late last year due to "technical reasons."

Wheelock was 20 years old when he was arrested and brought to Store Street Garda Station in June 2005. A few hours later, he was found unconscious in his cell and taken to the Mater Hospital, where he remained in a coma before passing away three months later. The official cause of death was recorded as suicide.

The Wheelock family has consistently rejected this, raising concerns about injuries observed on Wheelock's body and inconsistencies in Garda custody records. They have long campaigned for an independent public inquiry.

The core issue, according to councillors, is the lack of specific detail in existing legislation on how public ballots should be conducted. Labour Party Councillor Dermot Lacey noted the current law is vague on whether votes should be held in person, and whether a vote is allocated per household or per individual.

“I think it’s a very basic principle that we’re here to defend today, and that is the principle that ordinary Dubliners should decide who is honoured in this city,” said Reddy in a recent video for People Before Profit. “We have in Herzog Park an example of a park named after someone who has been involved in ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the creation of a racist apartheid state in Israel, something that jars completely with the values that most Dubliners uphold. Dublin, as a former colonised city, has no truck with people who have a role in colonial projects."

The case is to return before the court on October 7.