ONE of the most vandalised statues in Ireland has just become one of the most untouchable; it has been fitted with sensor alarms and a tracking device in its head.

The memorial of Sean Russell, the former IRA chief of staff, in Dublin’s Fairview Park has been attacked several times, mainly because of his ties to Nazi Germany.

The stone figure was decapitated four years ago by a self-styled anti-fascist group who claimed that Russell “looked to Hitler for political and military support in the IRA’s quest to reunify Ireland at the point of the bayonets of the Gestapo”. The right hand was also removed. In previous attacks the entire right arm was broken off, this time by a self-styled right-wing group who believed Russell was giving a communist salute.

Now a new version has been built in bronze and is to be unveiled at a ceremony in the park today. It was commissioned by the National Graves Association (NGA), an independent group which “commemorates those who died in the cause of Irish freedom”.

Sean Whelan, a spokesman for the NGA, said it has done everything possible to ensure the statue will not be vandalised again. “It’s solid bronze now, which means that somebody won’t be able to just take a hatchet to it,” he said.

“There’s a motion sensor, so anybody who tries to tamper with it will trigger a series of alarms. There is also a tracking device in the head, so if somebody does get it off we will be able to get it back.”

Naoise Ó Muiri, a Fine Gael councillor, said that instead of raising the likeness of a former terrorist leader, officials should have erected one of the actress Maureen Potter, who died in 2004. Ó Muiri pointed out that the new Russell statue “is in a different form” and they may have needed planning permission. “This is something that I will be looking into,” he said.

The bronze figure by William Malone shows Russell, who died off the coast of Ireland on a German U-boat in 1940, dressed in a trench coat and holding a hat. Whelan insists it is “a work of art in itself”.

It took the NGA three years to raise the cash for the new memorial, through fundraising events and sponsored walks.

Whelan maintained that Russell took trips to Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1920s purely in search of weapons to aid the cause of the IRA. “Russell was not a fascist and if the National Graves Association considered him to have been one, we would not be putting up statues of him,” he said. “It is nonsense.”

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