By Turlough Kelly
The day government condemned the proposed renaming of Herzog Park the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv was making repeated contact with the Israeli Office of the President.
Though Dublin City Council’s CEO insisted there was no pressure to drop the renaming it has now emerged the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs was also in touch with Ireland’s embassies in Washington, DC and Tel Aviv before the proposal was cancelled.
The Department of Foreign Affairs refuses access to release records because it says their publication might harm Ireland’s international relations.
‘No pressure – soft, hard or otherwise’ (he said)
Last year on 29 November foreign affairs minister Helen McEntee released a statement criticising the proposed renaming of Herzog Park in Dublin 6.
It’s named after former Israeli president Chaim Herzog and is the subject of a long-running campaign from Irish Sport for Palestine. “In 1947 he participated in the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba,” says the group.
“In my view this name change should not proceed and I urge Dublin City Councillors to vote against it,” said McEntee about the vote that would likely result in a new name for the park.
Tánaiste Simon Harris endorsed his party colleague’s statement. The next day taoiseach Micheál Martin released his own, beginning, “The proposal to rename Herzog Park should be withdrawn in its entirety and not proceeded with.”
On 1 December the vote was ultimately cancelled on technical grounds highlighted by the Department of Housing. Dublin City Council CEO Richard Shakespeare took responsibility for the “systemic failures” which led to this cancellation.
He said there was “no pressure – soft, hard or otherwise” from national political figures or their advisers.
A freedom of information request however outlines international correspondence about the issue.
The Department of Foreign Affairs was in contact with Ireland’s embassies in Tel Aviv and Washington, DC on 29 November, the day McEntee released her statement.
There were also two pieces of correspondence between the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv and the Office of the President of Israel on the same date.
The Department of Foreign Affairs won’t release these records – nor will it publish details of its discussions with the Department of the Taoiseach about Herzog Park.
Records released under freedom of information confirm these engagements.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has refused their release because their publication could “substantially impair good working relationships between this country and another state”.
Herzog Park was named in 1995 after the late Israeli president Herzog.
Chaim Herzog’s son, Isaac Herzog, is the current president of Israel. In 2025 a United Nations Commission of Inquiry found that president Isaac Herzog among others had incited genocide in Gaza.
After the council meeting in December the taoiseach’s intervention in the controversy was condemned as a “chilling form of political intimidation and an abuse of power” by a group of eight city councillors.
