Mary Lou McDonald tells Reclaim Moore Street rally Irish unity will happen

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has told a rally on Dublin’s Moore Street that “we will live in a united Ireland”.

At the demonstration, McDonald called for the State to acquire a terrace of houses on the street and surrounding laneways, an area that was used as the last headquarters for the 1916 Rising leaders.

Speaking to around 250 people gathered for the rally on Saturday afternoon, the Dublin Central TD spoke of “generation after generation” who had struggled to reclaim “our basic freedoms, language, land, heritage and identity”.

“As we meet on Moore Street, for those in positions of power here in this State, they need to hear loudly and clearly that our struggle is not over, that we are not done, but that we will live in that Republic that was proclaimed in 1916,” she said.

“We will live there. We will live in a united Ireland. We will taste and live full freedom, and we will remember forever those that went before, those that lit the flame, those that took on the might of an empire, the likes of which had never been seen before.”

The Reclaim Moore Street rally was calling for the area to be developed into a cultural quarter in line with the regeneration work planned for the GPO and surrounding areas in the city centre.

Numbers 14-17 Moore Street, where 1916 leaders held their final council of war, were designated as a national monument in 2007. The Office of Public Works (OPW) is currently constructing a 1916 visitor centre on the site.

The remaining terrace and other areas surrounding it are owned by UK-based property group Hammerson, whose approved masterplan for the area includes a new town square, office spaces, hotels and apartments.

In 2022, Dublin City Council (DCC) voted to grant full structural protection to numbers 10 and 20-21 Moore Street, which falls under Hammerson’s masterplan.

The decision was challenged by the company through a judicial review seeking to overturn DCC’s protected order, with that decision still awaited.

McDonald said the State needed to acquire the terrace and surrounding laneways on behalf of the Irish people and hold them in trust.

The rally also heard from Independent senator Frances Black and Green Party councillor Donna Cooney, as well as James Connolly-Heron, a great-grandson of James Connolly, and Proinsias Ó Rathaille, the grandson of Michael Joseph O’Rahilly.

Connolly-Heron said the continuing uncertainty surrounding Moore Street was “insulting” and “must end”.

“That uncertainty can end with the purchase of this sacred ground on behalf of the people to be held in trust for future generations,” he said.

He described Moore Street as the “last extant 1916 battleground in the city”.

“Here the leaders and volunteers of the Easter Rising made their last stand. It was here that the courage, sacrifice and determination of the men and women of the Rising became an enduring part of our national story,” he added.

“We cannot stand by and allow Dublin’s last surviving 1916 battleground to be lost to Hammerson, a British commercial developer.”