14/05/2026
On the agenda at an all-council meeting this week in Cork City, Green Party Councillor Oliver Moran put forward a motion that made national headlines, at least on social media.
That’s because Cllr Moran’s motion sought to memorialise the midge, or mosquito, that bit Oliver Cromwell “during his siege of the city, later causing his death through ‘Cork fever’ (malaria).”
How best to capture that moment, or at least the midge? Well, with the ‘world’s smallest public statue.’
Cllr Moran is well known in the City Council for his activism and motions around transport, climate, health and housing, but he also has form when it comes to the arts and culture.
As Cllr Moran told T+D, “I’ve been keeping an eye out for the more unusual or over-looked people to remember.”
At a council meeting in November 2025, he put forward a motion for a statue seeking recognition for Tnugdalus. Say who?
Tnugdalus is a fictional Irish knight created by an Irish monk who was stationed in Regensburg, Germany in medieval times. The story goes that Tnugdalus, after drinking to excess in Cork in 1148, collapsed into a death-like coma that lasted three days.
Upon waking, he recounted the horrors he experienced in the afterlife, providing the seminal medieval account of hell, including lakes of boiling pitch, shrieking demons with pitchforks, and sinners roasted and chewed in monstrous mouths.
Another of Cllr Moran’s statue motions was for Mary Delaney, who lived at Spring Lane close to the city centre and was regarded as one of the “greatest singers from the Irish Traveller community to have been recorded.”
Full story on T+D.
Would you support Cllr Moran’s mosquito statue? Let us know below.
