The Irish Times – Tuesday, January 12, 2010
PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent
LABOUR DUBLIN City councillor Mary Freehill has insisted that she has not called for the name of Archbishop Ryan Park, better known as Merrion Square in Dublin, to be changed.
She said yesterday that she had proposed a motion at a meeting of the city council on December 7th last inviting comments from people on the name of the park. Her motion was agreed and the council is to place advertisements in the media inviting such comments. She agreed she was prompted to propose the motion following findings of the Murphy report about Archbishop Dermot Ryan.
Archbishop of Dublin from 1972 to 1984, he transferred ownership of Merrion Square to the city in 1974. At one time the Catholic Church in Dublin had hoped to build a cathedral there. The issue of name change for Archbishop Ryan Park was discussed on Joe Duffy’s Spirit Level programme on RTÉ 1 last Sunday.
However, Ms Freehill felt the park might be more appropriately named after one of the many literary figures who had lived at Merrion Square.
She instanced Yeats, George Russell (AE), Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde, as well as Daniel O’Connell.
The Murphy report was very critical of Archbishop Ryan. On abuse allegations, it found that he “failed to properly investigate complaints, among others, against Fr McNamee, Fr Maguire, Fr Ioannes, Fr X, Fr Septimus and Fr Carney. He also ignored the advice given by a psychiatrist in the case of Fr Moore . . . subsequently convicted of a serious assault on a young teenager”.
Continue reading »
