One of Dublin’s finest sculptors, John Henry Foley designed this memorial to Daniel O’Connell which was unveiled to admiring crowds gathered in the pouring rain on 15 August 1882. Foley later went on to design the figure of Albert and to carve the group called Asia on the spectacular Albert Memorial in London.
In 1829, Daniel O’Connell, known as the ‘Liberator’, had achieved through political means religious freedom in Ireland after centuries of repression on Roman Catholics, the religion of the majority, and on other minority beliefs. His continuing efforts to have the hated Act of Union with Great Britain, dating from 1800, rescinded met with no success before he died on his way to Rome in 1847.