Letters to the Editor: Information on Killester heritage sign leaves a lot to be desired
The Killester heritage sign installed in May 2024 at the Middle Third Green in Killester, Dublin. Picture: X/@KillesterEstate
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry on reading the recently erected ‘heritage sign’ on Killester Green, a ‘history of Killester’ erected by Dublin City Council at public expense.
The main heading reads “Homes for Irish Heroes”. Homes for Heroes was an English government scheme to ensure loyalty of troops returning from the First World War, by providing them with housing. The British army was never referred to as “heroes” in Ireland, regardless of the merits of individuals.
The history starts by telling us that “the earliest written records” are from Norman times, when they referred to the area as Quillestre/Killestre. We then proceed with a history of wealthy anglo-landlord families in the area, ending with “homes for heroes” of the British army veterans of WWI.
So much for Irish history, erased, or deliberately omitted. Dublin City councillors should be ashamed of themselves.
According to historian Cormac Moore’s History on your doorstep Volume 6, “Dáil Éireann and Sinn Féin’s counter-government was vehemently opposed to the compulsory purchase of land for ex-servicemen as were many local authorities, the majority being controlled by Sinn Féin following local elections in 1920.
“This was illustrated in efforts by Dublin Corporation to prevent the use of land in Killester to house ex-servicemen.”
Wealthy vested interest proved too strong for the democratically-elected local authorities in 1920, and the houses were built. One hundred plus years later, the same wealthy vested interests [the British Legion, who proposed a memorial and pushed through this revisionist history] have once again proved too strong for the councillors of Dublin City Council, not one of whom has had the courage to stand up to power and wealth.
So much for Celtic history and the early Christian Church destroyed by the Norman invaders. Cill Easra came from Cill Lasra ( , Royal Irish Academy) who was also a pagan goddess. The monastery of Cill Easra, of which remains can be seen, was under the authority of the Monastery of Sord Cholm Cille, founded in sixth century ( , Breandán Mac Raois).
Women’s history is of course omitted. Photos accompanying historian Cormac Moore’s article, show “women working on a farm colony in Killester during the First World War”. The women were opposed to the closure of the farm, and were displaced when the land was compulsorily purchased for the British army veterans’ houses. Do we know what became of these women, or where they went when forced to leave Killester?
Needless to say, Republican history is not mentioned. A monument (newly restored by the National Graves Association) to volunteer Micheál de Neadh, was erected in the early 1920s, at the wall of the Old Monastery and graveyard in Killester.
Volunteer de Neadh was shot by state forces outside his place of work in September 1922. Strangely, this is well known to the chairman of the Commemorations and Memorials Committee in Dublin City Council who gave the 100 year oration for Volunteer de Neadh in 2022, but he is not mentioned on the ‘heritage sign’. Are councillors ashamed of history?
The burning of Killester House in 1920 is mentioned but not the reason for it. This was the era of the Black and Tans in Ireland and, according to the National Archives, “Killester House was burned by Republican forces to prevent military takeover”.
Michael O’Brien was shot by the British military at Killester in September 1921, supposedly by accident; and although a country area at the time, Killester was an active Republican area, where a number of train derailments were carried out during the Civil War.
To finish, we can only hope that the newly-elected Dublin City councillors will amend the many omissions on this ‘heritage sign’, and I look forward to hearing their views on Irish history.
At about 2.30 pm, on Saturday, June 1, the Irish Naval Service’s, former Flagship, LE Eithne, silently, under tow, passed its former naval base for the final time. She was the last ship of any kind to be built in Ireland when Verolme Cork Dockyard closed in November 1984.
Few seemed to know the time of her departure and those closest to her history must have been otherwise engaged, or perhaps decided to officially ignore this Naval event.
As her first commanding officer I drove to White Bay car park to make a final farewell as she was being taken to her fate further afield in Belgium.
I regret she was let run down like an old clock spring and discarded without ceremony. She could have been adapted as an naval aviation training vessel.
I very much doubt John O’Brien’s assertion that Israeli ambassador Erlich warned that ties between “Dublin and Tel Aviv” are in danger, given that the Israeli government sits in Israel’s official capital, Jerusalem (Irish Examiner Letters, June 3).
Ms Erlich has responded calmly and with dignity to an accumulation of unsympathetic and even hostile media and political voices in Ireland since the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas on civilians in Israel. She is to be commended for her diplomacy in such trying circumstances.
As many others do, Cal Hyland’s letter played fast and loose with the Green Line (Irish Examiner Letters, May 29). It does not clarify to confuse the entire Mandate territory, now effectively two nations and two administrations, with that of Israel alone.
Since 1948, the Arab citizens of Israel have full civic and religious rights and career opportunities. Nowadays there are 7.5m Israeli Jews and 2.3m Israeli Arabs including Christians — all with their Balfour Declaration rights within the state of Israel.
Stoking antisemitism against Jews in Europe and the US has already accelerated mostly younger Jews migrating to Israel.
The Arabs of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are not Israeli citizens — do not wish to be Israelis — and were under military government per international law until handed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) by Oslo in the 1990s.
If any of the 5m Arabs of Gaza and the ex-Jordanian West Bank has complaints about voting, civic rights, and freedom of religion or lack of other Balfour rights in the PA, address themselves to the PA — which has not held elections for 20 years!
The PA also continues overt hostilities with Israel by its “pay to slay” which outdoes Mrs Thatcher by privatising war.
It is not Israel’s fault that the PA Arabs cannot scratch their political left ear of rights with their political right hand of competence.
Could it be that ‘talk to no one’ has become the mantra for local election candidates?
Are we just not worth it or am I not going out enough?
I live among some of our wider European community and when I remind them about voting day, I get answers like ‘I wouldn’t know who to vote for’ or ‘I don’t understand Irish politics’.
On a good day I may try and have a go!
I will be voting on June 7, but I will be very selective with my preferences, starting with any females whose party holds values closest to my own. I welcome all who are willing to put their names forward but especially women who have for so long been denied this opportunity due to our patriarchal structures and systems.
But a bit of door-to-door work might be good for all of us.
The Government’s plan to dismantle the triple lock, removing the requirement for UN authority when our troops are deployed overseas, breaks solemn declarations given in order to override the people’s rejection of the Nice and Lisbon Treaties. Either those declarations still hold, or they were deceptive from the start. Either way, we should be wary of the current proposal.
The chairperson of Tánaiste Martin’s forum, Dame Louise Richardson, reported that (a) the UN needed to be reformed, and (b) there was no consensus on the triple lock but there was a “preponderance of views” against it. Even she had to note that this “preponderance” was “especially among the experts and practitioners”.
This is hardly surprising given their “preponderance” within the Forum’s selective line-up.
In 1995, the then government invited UN official servant Erskine Childers III to advise on forthcoming foreign policy white paper. He detailed how “a handful of governments” had hijacked and downgraded the UN, and urged Ireland for reform.
Successive Irish governments have systematically rejected his profound analysis and advice. Their focus is on copperfastening the hold over the UN of the “handful of governments” dominating the EU/Nato strategic partnership, even at the cost of preserving Russia’s and China’s vetoes.
This emerged blatantly on St Patrick’s Day when then taoiseach Leo Varadkar defended his failure to question US arming of Israel with a contemptuous gibe: Critics should “spend a bit more time reading foreign policy” — the staple fare of the Forum’s “experts and practitioners”.
