Mannix Flynn, Independent councillor in Dublin City Council, sat with his legs dangling over a window ledge at City Hall this afternoon, waving a placard which bore the message, 'Disband the Artane Band'.
The Journal.ie report that several other protesters arrived with similar placards and stood on pavement below.
His call to disband the Artane Band indicates a hardening of his position in the last while. Last month, he tabled a motion at Dublin City Council demanding that the band be renamed.
The band's general manager Keith Kelly told the Journal.ie last month that the band wouldn't be changing its name, saying that the band is named after the community from which it springs.
Flynn wrote on his blog today, outlining why he is calling for the band to be disbanded.
It is no longer appropriate, with what we now know, about residential institutional child abuse at St Josephs Artane, that this band, should be still in existence, wearing the uniform of that institution – St Josephs Industrial School Artane, and making statements that they are proud of their history when in actual fact, the vast part of that history was engulfed in horrendous human rights breaches upon children, including child sex abuse at St Josephs Industrial school, Artane, where the band was founded.
Flynn, himself a survivor of abuse in childhood, said that those who suffered in this institution and others like it, "should not have to endure the ordeal of this band in that uniform, parading around Croke Park, or any other public place."
Diarmuid Ferriter has written that the band first performed for the GAA back in 1886. Ironically, in spite of this nationalistic association, their first ever performance was for the Prince of Wales.
Indeed, the band has already undergone a name change. Many still refer to it as 'The Artane Boys Band', oblivious to the fact that it removed the word "boys" from the name some years ago.
In his memoir, Gene Kerrigan wrote that when growing up in Dublin in the 1950s, the Artane industrial school was "a byword for fear."
