A builder who paid more than €7 million for a detached 1920s house in Palmerston Park and subsequently demolished most of it has sought planning permission from Dublin City Council to build a new house on the site.
The planning application was lodged by Felix Whelan, who owns Garland Homes, three weeks after he was served with an enforcement order by the council halting demolition work on the original house because it was in breach of an earlier permission.
According to a spokesman for the council, Mr Whelan had permission to build a large extension to the side and rear of the house on a half-acre site at the corner of Palmerston Park and Orchard Road.
This would have involved partial demolition of the house.
However, after local residents complained about the extent of the demolition work, planning enforcement officer Barry White inspected the site and found that only part of the ground-floor front wall was still standing.
Work then stopped on foot of the enforcement order.
Mr Whelan told The Irish Times that the builders had "found it impossible to retain the walls that were left [inside the house] and make it habitable as well".
The purpose of the latest planning application was to regularise their removal, he explained.
The application is for a new two-storey house with five bedrooms, living areas, a roof terrace and a detached single-storey garage "to replace recently partly-demolished existing dwelling" together with an increase to 2.1m of the site's stone boundary walls.
Mr Whelan said the new house, designed by McCrossan O'Rourke Manning Architects, would be "in character" with the original house, Grianblah, which was built by Manning Robertson, a distinguished architect and town planner in Dublin during the 1920s and 1930s.
When it was put up for auction by Lisney estate agents in March 2005, the guide price was €3 million. With a floor area of 244 sq m (2,626 sq ft), the Arts and Crafts-style house was described as having a rambling layout with quirky interior details and secluded gardens.
In an unrelated case, another developer, Fergal Gaughran, has agreed to rebuild an almost completely demolished house at 1 The Rise, Mount Merrion, after Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council brought enforcement proceedings against him in Dublin Circuit Civil Court.
