The Lord Mayor of Dublin has apologised to the Jewish community of Dublin and the residents of Rathgar for "the flawed manner and administrative failures" that happened regarding the process to rename Herzog Park in Rathgar in south Dublin.
At the monthly meeting of Dublin City Council, Councillor Ray McAdam said that he was making the apology after a motion from the South East Area Committee about the issue.
That motion said that the administrative errors and failures were accepted by the city council administration, and executive, and an apology was offered to elected representatives, but not to the Jewish community and the people of Dublin who were impacted by the controversy.
Last November, there was a huge outcry when a proposal to rename Herzog Park was published on the council's monthly meeting agenda after an agreement by members of the council's Commemorations and Naming Committee in July.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed concerns about the proposal, and the Jewish community here and internationally voiced their objection to the plans.
When Dublin City Council met days later in early December, it removed the proposal to change the name of Herzog Park from the council agenda and did not take a vote on the planned change after elected representatives were told it was not legally sound and should not be voted on because national legislation that allowed the renaming of placenames had not been fully commenced.
The park in Rathgar was named in 1995 after Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel between 1983 and 1993, who was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin.
