The O’Rahilly Home – Hotels over Heritage.

Yesterday at dawn, Dublin property developers demolished another of the city’s historical Republican landmarks to make way for a hotel and apartment complex.

The former home of 1916 leader Michael Joseph O’Rahilly and veteran Cumann na mBan member Nancy O’Rahilly was destroyed by the property developer and landlord families of ‘McSharry & Kennedy’ in an illegal demolition.

The O’Rahilly home at 40 Herbert Park, Ballsbridge, was not just the former residence of two of Irelands most prominent early 20th Century revolutionaries, but it was also the meeting place for the IRA army council in 1921 wherein they planned the largest military action of the Tan War, the attack on Dublin’s Custom House.

Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, known as The O’Rahilly, was a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and served as Director of Arms. He took part in the 1916 Rising in Dublin and was killed whilst leading a charge on a British machine gun post covering the retreat from the GPO.

Despite being ruled as a protected site by Dublin City Council, the building now lays in ruins.

The cultural parasites of McSharry & Kennedy can be remembered as the same landlord property developers who offered to sell Dublin City Council 10 apartments to be used for social housing at the extortionate price of 5.88 million euro.

Landlords and property developers are killing Ireland, they are killing our people, forcing them into homelessness and poverty, and they are killing our culture; uprooting heritage for hotels.

In a socialist republic, with a democratic economy, our lands and culture would no longer be subservient to the market, but prioritised for the enrichment and fulfilment of the Irish nation and all its people.