AIDAN KELLY,
Madam, - It must surely be one of the strangest anomalies anywhere that the commander in chief of a revolutinary organisation that gave birth to the beginnings of his country's independence remains, after 200 years, without a single memorial to his honour.
Edward FitzGerald was a beacon of hope in a time of despair for this island. He sacrificed a future with a beautiful wife and three lovely children and between 1795 and 1798 he devoted himself to the overthrow of British power in Ireland. After he had received two pistol shots in the right shoulder, while struggling to resist capture he was isolated, under 24-hour militia guard, in a room in Newgate Jail, Green Street, Dublin, and denied visitors or proper medical help. On June 4th, 1798, poisoned and delirious from gangrene infection, he died.
Edward's warm and generous disposition endeared him to all those with whom he came into contact. He was highly thought of in Canada, America, France, the cradle of his aspirations for Ireland.
His love of Blackrock and Frescati House, the home where he and his brothers and sisters spent much of their childhood years was ever present in his thoughts.
In the early months of 1797, while lying low from the authorities at Dublin Castle, he wrote to his mother from Frescati House: "I can't tell you how pleased I was to see this place again. I have always a thousand delightful feels about it ... In a moment one goes back over the years, every shrub, every turn, every peep of the house, has a little history with it."
On November 1st 1983, all that remained of Frescati was swept to the ground in two hours. They rolled a boulder in and slapped a plaque upon it, with incorrect historical data. How quickly we can add insult to injury, and know not that we do it! Let us rip that boulder out and give Blackrock a statue to Lord Edward, worthy of his place in Ireland's history and his love of Frescati House.
On Monday, October 16th, 2000, Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council voted unanimously in favour of the erection, in the centre of the town of Blackrock, of a granite plinth and statue to the memory of Lord Edward FitzGerald.
Two large companies in Blackrock agreed to consider favourably a contribution to this project. After two years, the council has still to get its act together. Is this the final irony?
On Monday, October 7th, Cllr William Dockrell put a very clearly worded motion to the manager of the council, demanding action on the financing of the project, and the forming of a concerted plan to honour the founder of Irish Republican Nationalism. - Yours, etc.,
AIDAN KELLY, Frascati Park, Blackrock.