Meathman's Diary: Unholy row over moving statues

A few weeks back, the Irish Independent columnist, Sarah Carey, revisited a controversy that took place some 30 years ago, when opposition blew up to a new statue of St Patrick proposed by the Office of Public Works for the Hill of Tara, where the national patron is said to have been given permission by the High King of Ireland to convert the pagan Irish at the time, or so we’re told.

There was a public competition to replace an older statue, sculpted by Curry of Navan, which had stood on the hill since the late 1800s, but the statue selected by the OPW wasn’t deemed suitable by locals, who had been campaigning to have the original replaced, and a very public row ensued.

The bronze statue portrayed Patrick as the young shepherd carrying a bell and a staff topped with antlers, and was an attractive work of art. However, it wasn’t deemed appropriate for the hill by those campaigning to have the original bishopesque statue replaced, led by members of Rathfeigh and District Historical Society, with the esteemed historian, Elizabeth Hickey of Skryne Castle, leading the charge.

Ms Hickey was a founder member of the Meath Archaeological and Historical Society, the MAHS.

In 1994, she wrote of the original Curry statue: "The statue was not a masterpiece, and its artistic merit has been much disclaimed among the cognoscenti. This does not matter. It was a kindly representation of Ireland's national saint carved by a Navan man, William Curry, and erected at his own expense at the end of the 19th century. Artistically, it symbolised an Ireland by way of finding its own values again; an Ireland perhaps of shamrocks and wolf dogs, of round towers and mitred saints; but a more serious Ireland also of scholars such as Douglas Hyde and Eoghan O'Growney, of idealists such as Horace Plunkett; the politcial Ireland also of Charles Stewart PArnell. There were many strands to that Ireland and William Curry's statue of St Patrick was but one."

Ms Carey declared herself stunned to learn of this controversy over the monument, which made national news at the time.

“There was uproar," she declared. “Locals were furious and mounted a protest. RTE’s Teresa Mannion reported on the row for Nationwide in 1997, an episode that is still online. There’s poor Teresa on the Hill, hair blowing wildly, with protestors complaining bitterly that they only wanted 19th century St Patrick, not the pagan Patrick.”

A local TD even backed the local protestors. Imagine!

Ms Carey may not have been aware of the background to the story. That in 1992, much to the anger of the local people, the Office of Public Works had swooped in overnight and removed the old statue without telling anybody. That the Rathfeigh Historical Society had been campaigning for years to have it replaced, leading to the public competition. The locals had skin in the game, even if the OPW and the State tries to constantly freeze them out of any decisions regarding the National Monument area that is also home to many.

The constant neglect of the Hill of Tara by the stakeholder authorities, the buck-passing by state agencies, the lack of proper public parking facilities, leaving it to private individuals to provide parking, the conservation reports after reports commissioned and left idle on government shelves, the radio silence on who even makes up the implementation group for the current conservation plan; the 10 years it has taken to rebuild the wall around the graveyard and the condition of the site over that period.

Perhaps Ms Carey could use her national columns to focus on those issues, rather than criticising the views of local people in a saga that ended almost three decades ago - in their favour.