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THE SCULPTOR Albert G Power is best known as the creator of the Pádraic Ó Conaire statue, once an integral part of Eyre Square, but now on display in the Galway City Museum.

In his famous statue of the writer and Irish scholar Pádraic Ó Conaire, the sculpture Albert Power presents a brilliant likeness to the man Galway knew as he went about the town. Liam Ó Briain, a friend and fellow Irish enthusiast, remarked that Albert Power had captured exactly how the man looked. Meeting Ó Conaire in town one evening, Ó Briain remembered that he looked in reality as he is on the statue: ‘the stick in his right hand, the little hat on his head’, a face that could show his ‘puckish humour.’ *

Week III

“On Thursday night a crowd numbering several thousand assembled inside the Square, and two men set to work sawing at the base of life-size bronze monument of Lord Dunkellin, a brother of the notorious landlord, Lord Clanricarde of Portumna. In a scene reminiscent of the downfall of Saddam Hussain’s statue in Baghdad, shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a rope was fastened around Dunkellin’s neck, and with a mighty pull, down it fell amidst great applause.”

Even before it came to Galway the statue of Sean Pádraic Ó Conaire was causing a stir. As Albert Power carved away in his stone-yard at Berkeley Street, Dublin, word had got out that this was a work of exceptional standards.