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What’s in a name?

Wednesday, 09 April 2008

A proposal to change the name of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has met with fierce resistance from local politicians in the Dún Laoghaire area who claim the motive behind the suggestion is to split the county rather than to promote unity within it.
Cllr Jim O’Leary (FG) is proposing that the name of the local authority be changed to ‘Rathdown County Council’ as he maintains the existing title of ‘Dún Laoghaire Rathdown’ is both long winded and symbolises the division between the Dundrum and Dún Laoghaire sides of the county.
He will table a motion at this month’s county council meeting that a committee be established to look into the possibility of changing the local authority’s name.
He has also suggested that the name of the local authority be changed to ‘Rathdown County Council’ after the old half Barony of Rathdown.

The barony of Rathdown was split into two following the formation of County Wicklow some 400 years ago. The other half of the barony remained in County Dublin.
The area covered by the old half barony covers the vast majority of the modern day county council area and stretches from Merrion gates in the north, to the border with County Wicklow in the south and as far as Dundrum in the west.
Cllr O’Leary said: “There are people in Dundrum who feel they are just added on to the Dún Laoghaire part. If you ask someone where they are from, very few people are going to say I am from Dún Laoghaire Rathdown because it is very hard to spit it out.
“The name doesn’t suggest a sense of place or of unity and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown suggests two bits bolted together. You are either from one part or from the other.
“We need a name that would unify the whole county and my own view is that it should be called Rathdown,” he added.
In addition he said that from a marketing point of view the council should have a shorter name. He noted the local authority recently decided to move to an abbreviated version of its full title in its logo form of DLR.
The local authority said this logo was used for reasons of “clarity, simplicity and accessibility”.
However, the chairman of the Dún Laoghaire Community Association, Michael Merrigan, dismissed the proposed name change and said the local authority should have originally been called Dún Laoghaire County Council after the administrative capital of the town.
“This proposal would wipe Dún Laoghaire off the map and that would not create unity but further friction,” he said.
“They [the councillors in Dundrum] have this notion that the amount of commercial rates collected in Dundrum is higher than the other side of the county and hence one is subsidising the other. His ultimate reasoning may not be one of unity but rather of fracturing the county.”
Dún Laoghaire based councillor, Jane Dillon Byrne (Lab), said she would be opposed to any change in the current title of the local authority.
“He [Cllr O’Leary] is trying to get publicity for himself,” she claimed. “He is trying to stir up acrimony between the two groups on the council, the one on the inland side and the one that represents the coastal side of the local authority.
“He is being mischievous and I wish he would stop it.”
However, in response to claims that he was trying to split the county, Cllr O’Leary said there were constant clashes between councillors who felt that too much of the council’s money raised in Dundrum was subsequently spent in Dún Laoghaire.
“I am looking for a name that will bring councillors together in an attempt to diffuse the acrimony that is beginning to develop,” he said.
Following the reorganisation of local government in Dublin in 1993, the former Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire Borough Corporation were abolished and replaced with three new councils - Fingal, South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown.
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council was so named because the political reality at the time was that the statutory body known as Dún Laoghaire Borough or Corporation had to be included as part of the new name.
A spokeswoman for the county council said Rathdown was mentioned as a rural district in the list of Irish Local Government Areas 1900 - 1921.
“The document refers to ‘Rathdown No1 Rural District’ which was situated in the rural part of South East County Dublin,” she said.

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