Duffy to call for a memorial to honour the slain children of 1916 Rising

RTÉ broadcaster and author Joe Duffy will today launch a campaign for a national memorial to the 40 children who lost their lives in the 1916 Rising.

The Liveline presenter, together with sculptor Orla de Brí, is calling for ‘a significant public piece of art’ to be erected in central Dublin in memory of the children.

Mr Duffy will launch the campaign at Woodenbridge World War I Memorial Park in Co. Wicklow this afternoon, where its annual Armistice Day commemoration is taking place from 2pm.

The broadcaster has already written a book, Children Of The Rising, about ‘the forgotten casualties of 1916’.

‘I was reduced to tears in Glasnevin’

And Ms de Brí’s impressive design envisages a three-metre high bronze piece with 40 hearts, which would reflect onto a three-metre long piece in the ground with the names of each of the children engraved.

It would be lit and landscaped, with an explanation positioned nearby.

Mr Duffy campaigned against the removal of the Necrology Wall in Glasnevin Cemetery earlier this year, which listed the names of every single person – from all sides – who died in conflict in Ireland between 1916 and 1923.

The wall was discontinued after being badly vandalised several times with paint and a sledgehammer.

The removal of the wall, and with it the only commemoration for civilians who died in 1916, spurred the launch of today’s campaign in memory of the children of The Rising.

Mr Duffy said: ‘Today [the Necrology Wall] is a sheer, blank, black wall.

‘An ignominious standing stone of intolerance, wanton vandalism and cowardice by those who in the dead of night defaced it.

‘Nowhere else in the world has a memorial to civilians who died violently in the creation of a state been removed… I can honestly tell you I was reduced to tears when I visited Glasnevin to see the blank, black slates with the names – mostly of the forgotten civilians – removed.’

Just under 500 people were killed during the six days of the Easter Rising, the majority of whom – around 54% – were civilians. Around 30% were army and police and about 16% Irish rebels.

‘Rightly the leaders of the Rebellion, both men and women, are remembered in nearly every city and town in the country, through memorials, street names, railway stations, hospitals, public buildings and parks,’ Mr Duffy said. ‘The majority who died in the Easter Rising in 1916 are forgotten, their names are not etched anywhere.’

The RTÉ presenter will also speak about his own granduncle Christopher Kit Carroll, who was killed aged 21 on the Somme in France eight days before the Easter Rising began.

He and his own uncle Tom Kavanagh ‘had walked the few hundred yards from their tenement room in 89 Church Street to the nearby Linenhall Barracks to sign up after the collapse of the 1913 lockout’.

Mr Duffy continued: ‘I don’t know if they signed up to defend small countries or simply to try to make a living in the dire poverty of Dublin.

‘I suspect the latter, because my grandmother, Christopher’s sister, was an ardent follower of Michael Collins, hated de Valera and never spoke of her brother’s death in World War One.’

The Woodenbridge memorial commemorates 1,215 men and nine women from Co. Wicklow who died during the Great War as soldiers, sailors, munitions workers, nurses and civilians during the Great War.

‘The majority who died are forgotten’