City planners puzzled by new bronze plaque on bridge

WHILE a lot has gone under Dublin’s O’Connell bridge, the local council are far more interested in what has recently been placed on top.

City planners are puzzled by the appearance of a professionally-crafted bronze plaque in commemoration of a certain Fr Pat Noise.

Yesterday, the local authority said in no uncertain terms that the plaque was not official and would be removed. How it got there, about one week ago, remains a mystery.

The six by eight inch metal plate was crudely slotted into a rectangular slot on the bridge and has aroused the interest of many passers-by, not least of all those working for Dublin City Council.

Fr Pat Noise was, it states, “advisor to Peadar Clancey. He died under suspicious circumstances when his carriage plunged into the Liffey on August 10, 1919”.

And under a cast profile of the said Fr Noise are the words “erected by the HSTI”.

“The council would be very interested to hear from anyone with information regarding this plaque,” the local authority said yesterday.

Dublin City Council has failed in its efforts to uncover anything in official records about Fr Pat Noise or his demise. Nor could the authority find any evidence of an organisation known as the HSTI.

The nearest they can find to a Peadar Clancey, is IRA volunteer Peadar Clancy who was killed by British forces at Dublin Castle not long after the Bloody Sunday massacre in Croke Park in November 1920.