Bid to rename Dublin Airport after former taoiseach Sean Lemass

A Bill to rename Dublin airport after former taoiseach Sean Lemass is to be introduced in the Dail on Tuesday.

Put forward by Fianna Fail’s Malcom Byrne, it seeks to have the airport named “Sean Lemass Dublin International Airport”.

The TD for South Wicklow and North Wexford said in a statement the move was to recognise Mr Lemass’s “transformative contribution to modern Ireland”.

He said: “Dublin Airport is Ireland’s gateway to the world. It should bear the name of a leader who helped open that gateway in the first place.

“Sean Lemass oversaw the development of our aviation sector, championed national infrastructure, and laid the foundations for the open, outward-looking Ireland we know today.”

A veteran of the 1916 rising, Civil War and War of Independence, the Fianna Fail politician represented constituencies in South Dublin for more than forty years.

He served as taoiseach between 1959 and 1966 and is recognised as opening Ireland to foreign trade in the 1950s and leading the country in its efforts to join the European Economic Community (EEC), a precursor to the European Union.

Mr Byrne has pointed to a number of other international airports named after high-profile leaders including: Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport in France, John F Kennedy International Airport in New York and Montreal Trudeau International Airport in Canada.

He added: “Lemass stood for progress, ambition, and opportunity. Renaming the airport in his honour would reflect both our pride in his legacy and our confidence in Ireland’s future.”