Dublin City Council halts plans to rename city’s Herzog Park after backlash from Irish government

Dublin councilors have halted plans to rename a park currently honoring a past Israeli president that had drawn criticism from the Irish and Israeli governments, the city council says.

Ireland has been among the most outspoken critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, and the plan to rename the capital’s Herzog Park followed a campaign by pro-Palestinian activists.

The proposal had been scheduled for a city council vote in the near future.

But now, following accusations of antisemitism, Dublin City Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare announces he is “proposing to withdraw the report from the Agenda,” citing procedural reasons.

In a statement, Shakespeare says he is referring the matter back to the council committee responsible, without touching on the debate sparked by the renaming plan.

Earlier today, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin had argued in a statement on X that the proposal “should be withdrawn in its entirety.”

“The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as antisemitic,” Martin said, calling it “overtly divisive and wrong.”

The park, located near Dublin’s sole Jewish school, is named after Ireland-born Chaim Herzog, Israel’s sixth president.

Herzog, who died in 1997, was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Dublin before serving as the president of Israel between 1983 and 1993.

His father was the first chief rabbi of Ireland after it gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1922, and his son, Isaac Herzog, is the current Israeli president.