Kerry councillor cries foul over Dublin statue
IT’S an iconic image of Dublin – a seagull sitting on top of the Daniel O’Connell statue. But the mess it leaves behind looks set to remain for some time… much to the disquiet of a Kerry county councillor.
A Freedom of Information request reveals that council workers do not clean the Liberator’s well-soiled head because it would seriously impinge on the adjacent Luas line.
‘Bird droppings are not removed from the O’Connell statue as a cherry picker, along with a shutdown of the Luas overhead network, would be required to carry out this work’, the request to Dublin City Council revealed.
Cleaning the statue costs €1,875 a year, but this only covers cleaning at lower levels of the statue.
Norma Moriarty, a Fianna Fáil councillor in Co. Kerry, where O’Connell was born in 1775, has said that something should be done to maintain the statue of the visionary 19th-century MP who died in 1847. Ms Moriarty said that while she understood the challenges faced by officials, ‘we need to respect the past’.
Donal Fallon, Dublin City Council historian in residence, said that pigeons perching on monuments had long been a concern, but steps should be taken to reduce their impact.
A spokesman for Dublin City Council said: ‘The cleaning of bird droppings is not practical as it will reoccur within days of cleaning, and we cannot fit spikes, etc, to the head of the statue.’