Vandalism in Ireland
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Some well-known cases of vandalism in Ireland included the blowing up of Nelson's Pillar, a large monument in the centre of Dublin, by a group of republicans in 1966. Other public monuments blown up in Ireland included Gough's Statue in the Phoenix Park and King Billy's statue in College Green, both in Dublin city centre. The Irish Public Records Office was destroyed by Irish Republicans in 1922, an act which destroyed one thousand years of state and religious archives. The justification was that though there were Irish records, they had been compiled by English and British governments and thus should be destroyed, an act described by some historians as cultural genocide. (An attempt to blow up the historic Linen Hall Library in Belfast by a unit of the Provisional IRA in the early 1990s was foiled by others in the movement itself, who realised in time that the famous library actually contained some of the archives of the republican movement itself.)