Naming New Estates and Roads

In the last year the majority of councillors in Dublin City Council and
South Dublin County Council voted to name all new residential developments
in Irish in their new City/County Developments Plans as is policy in Galway
City, Navan and Shannon.

Cian O’Callaghan from Labour in Fingal put down the same motion recently in
Fingal but it was not accepted.

I opposed this Gaeilge dictatorship on the City Council. Why this type of
motion is passed may be in part due to a reaction the other extreme of
anglophile names such as Hampton Wood, Tudor this that or the other,
Kempton etc that proliferated in the past twenty years. The matter of
naming is an administrative one as I was told peremtorily by the well-known
Damian Drum, the Area Manager in Finglas, on one occasion when I did my
Henry Tudor opposition act to Royal-associated names.

The naming of new estates and roads should better reflect local history or
famous people who may have been artists, writers, musicians or politicians
not always of the nationalist variety. History rather than propaganda
should prevail.