Luke Kelly, Luke Kelly, so good they commissioned a statue of him twice. Well, sort of. Gerry Hunt, a graphic artist living on the northside of Dublin, raised almost €40,000 to commission a statue of the late folk icon, Luke Kelly. He told Joe Duffy how he commissioned the artist John Coll – best known for his bronze statues of Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan – to sculpt the statue of Luke Kelly he'd waited years for someone else to make. Coll did so and the statue is now in the foundry, waiting to find out where it will be placed. That decision, Gerry says, is up to Dublin City Council.

Gerry Hunt, a graphic artist living on the northside of Dublin, raised almost €40,000 to commission a statue of the late folk icon, Luke Kelly. He told Joe Duffy how he commissioned the artist John Coll – best known for his bronze statues of Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan – to sculpt the statue of Luke Kelly he'd waited years for someone else to make. Coll did so and the statue is now in the foundry, waiting to find out where it will be placed. That decision, Gerry says, is up to Dublin City Council.

"The information that I've got is that it will be somewhere off Grafton Street or Baggot Street."

Meanwhile, the City Council decided to run their own competition for a statue of – yes! – Luke Kelly. The competition was won by Vera Klute. Her design consists of a two-metre-high representation of Luke Kelly's head. This makes it a different proposition to John Coll's full-body seated sculpture, which shows the legendary Dubliner with his banjo in his hands, his eyes closed and his mouth open in full flow. Where will Klute's statue go? Gerry thinks it may be placed in a park:

"It's a statue, a full head that size, that I feel would be much better in a park than, we'll say, on the side of a street where people could come up against it and it might be a bit overpowering."

Gerry only heard about the City Council's competition when Coll had constructed his statue and it was being cast in the foundry. Gerry showed Coll's statue to Luke Kelly's three brothers (who told him they thought it was very good) before making his submission to the Council. He believes there's room in Dublin for both statues.

"We're not a city of skyscrapers, we're not a city of great modern buildings, but we are a city of good sculptures and people love them."

You wait more than 30 years, then two statues of Luke Kelly come along at once. You can listen back to Gerry's call with Joe and the rest of Wednesday's Liveline here.