Senator Feargal Quinn has urged that the address of ┴ras an Uachtarβin - Chesterfield Avenue - should be re-named William J. Clinton Avenue, in recognition of the former US president's contribution to the peace process.
His colleague, Senator David Norris, disagrees. "I am not against honouring Bill Clinton", Norris tells Quidnunc, but it should not be at the expense of the Earl of Chesterfield, an 18-century viceroy who refused to enforce the penal laws against Catholics and who successfully campaigned to have the Phoenix Park opened to all the citizens of Dublin.
The one blot on his copybook, says Senator Norris, is that he refused to lend financial support to Samuel Johnson's dictionary project.
Dr Johnson managed to raise the money anyway and when the venture was assured, Chesterfield offered to come aboard. Johnson spurned him in a celebrated letter, in which he said that since the drowning man was now safe, he had no need of the Chesterfield rope.
Norris says it would be a cheap way of honouring Clinton: "If I were President Clinton, I would not be flattered by having a back lane in the Phoenix Park named after me".