Liberate Daniel from footnotes of history

Time to honour how he had the balls to stand up for freedom

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WHETHER it's groping Molly Malone, paint-bombing Luke Kelly or mooning the portal, Dublin doesn't tend to treat its monuments all that well.

They are given mocking nicknames like the 'Tart with the Cart', disdained like the Spire or blown apart like Nelson's Pillar.

But maybe the worst treatment of all has been dished out to the man dubbed the 'Forgotten King of Ireland'.

Because despite its towering presence at the end of the nation's main thoroughfare, the statue of the Great Liberator Daniel O'Connell is mostly just that, forgotten and ignored.

It's a fate worse than even becoming the centre of the bizarre consent debate that has befallen Molly Malone on nearby Suffolk Street.

There are many theories as to why O'Connell was written into the drearier pages of Irish history.

Most revolve around the fact that he didn't go about his business with a gun.

In a nation smitten with revolutionary romantics and warrior poets, O'Connell's devotion to pacifism and peaceful protest made him something of an awkward dinner party conversation.

SIEGE

But a look around the world - and even around the street he now watches oversuggests the 250th anniversary of his birth this week might be a good time to start urgently reclaiming his ideas from the footnotes of history.

It's not hype to credit O'Connell as a founding godfather of the freedom and democracy ideals that are under siege in 2025.