Irish campaigners have called on the Irish state to halt the 'disrespectful' demolition of the area surrounding the historic 1916 Easter Rising battlefield site.

Sinn Fein appealed for support from Irish government ministers in parliament yesterday to save and then restore the monument, which the great-grandson of Irish patriot James Connolly said was a modest demand.

According to Breaking News, James Connolly Heron has been fighting for the restoration of the Moore Street historical site for the last 10 years, and he's appalled by plans to tear down surrounding buildings to make way for another shopping centre in an area already filled with them.

'People are waking up to the fact that we have four years until the centenary,' Connolly Heron told the press. 'We need something to show the Gathering in 2016 (the government initiative to invite Ireland's diaspora to visit the country as tourists to aid its economic redevelopment).

"Are we going to show people a monument to the rising, or are we going to show them a shopping centre that is a monument to the Celtic Tiger?' Connolly demanded.

Sinn Fein's leader Gerry Adams is a high profile supporter of the Moore Street campaign, which aims to restore the row of houses where Irish rebel leaders met for the last time. Instead of providing a site for another shopping center the plan is to turn the area into 'a cultural educational centre of excellence.'

Connolly Heron hopes that the project will not be sunk by the temptation to indulge in political point-scoring.

'That would be dishonouring the people we are trying to honour,' he explained. 'It doesn’t belong to any party, it belongs to the people. What we are asking is that what is already a designated national monument be protected, so that future generations will still remember.'

City developers want to tear down the buildings that surround the small row of two story houses that have been designated a national monument and are protected by law.

Adams said if the plans are allowed to go ahead that taxpayers would be as good as funding the vandalising of a national monument.

A motion to halt the demolition was drafted by descendants of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation and the plan to save the monument already has the support of over 50 opposition ministers.