He hit the headlines when he drove his cement mixer, emblazoned with the words "Toxic Bank Anglo," into the gates of the Irish parliament. Two months later, self-styled Anglo Avenger Joe McNamara was back in Dublin city Centre, this time staging a protest from atop a cherry picker.
McNamara is known in Ireland for a series of protests against the Anglo-Irish Bank and the government's handling of the Irish financial crisis. But in 2011, the 42-year-old developer pulled his biggest protest yet. He built his version of Stonehenge on an Achill Island hilltop off the Mayo coast. The 15-foot high circle is 30 meters in diameter and almost 100 meters in circumference, with 39 standing stones and lintels. It took six months to plan and was built during a single weekend.
What it does not have, however, is planning permission. The Mayo County Council requested a court order to force McNamara to remove the edifice as it had been built without the required paperwork. McNamara claimed that the structure was exempt from planning rules because it was an "ornamental garden." It is still standing to this day.
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