Businessman Dermot Desmond has sold his Merrion Square house for a figure in excess of €9 million. The financier, who owns several properties in Dublin and overseas, bought 71 Merrion Square, the former home of fashion designer Sybil Connolly, for a reported €7 million in 2000 and is said to have spent another €5 million restoring and upgrading the Georgian property.
The Property Price Register records a purchase price of €9,246,550 for the house, which dates from 1791.
Restoration of the house was dogged by planning delays, with Mr Desmond spending four years securing permission to install a dumb waiter, an internal service lift installed in Georgian properties to transport food from the cellars upstairs using pulleys and levers.
At the time Mr Desmond told The Irish Times why he fought a series of planning refusals for the dumb waiter. “The desire of conservationists to have perfect museum pieces caught in one period of time must be weighed against the right of a property’s owner to have full use and enjoyment of something that belongs to them,” he said.
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Mr Desmond recently completed the refurbishment of Walford on Shrewsbury Road, once Ireland’s most expensive house when it was bought by property developer Sean Dunne in 2005 for €57.9 million. Mr Desmond paid €14.25 million for the neglected Victorian home in 2016 and tripled it in size to 1,579 sq m (17,000sq ft), adding an outdoor paddle tennis court, four large bedrooms, staff quarters, a gym, wine cellar, games room, basement swimming pool and a three-bay garage.
The financier, who is the largest individual shareholder in Celtic Football Club, owns several other properties around the world and is a joint owner of the five-star Sandy Lane Hotel resort in Barbados.
Mr Desmond did not respond to a request for comment.