18th-century housing lacks fire certificate
A HISTORIC 18th-century mansion has been housing international protection applicants for almost a year without a fire certificate and is in breach of other planning regulations, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Ryevale House in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, the 260-year-old former home of Central Bank architect Sam Stephenson, was bought for €1.6m at the end of 2022 and has housed up to 80 women since last March.
Local residents say its owners and developers have been ‘walking all over’ planning laws ever since, but that official appeals to various authorities are being ignored.
Asked to confirm if the building has a fire certificate, Kildare County Council confirmed an application had been ‘lodged on 14th Dec 2023’ and that the application ‘is currently under consideration’. But in an apparent contradiction of practice, Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman said on December 12: ‘Once all documentation is received, the Department continues to engage with the appropriate fire certification authorities to ensure fire certification is up-to-date and once evidence of sign-off is received from the relevant authorities and provided to the Department, a contract is signed for the use of the property.’
The minister was responding to a parliamentary question from Louth Fine Gael TD Fergus O’Dowd.
Aside from the fire certificate, Ryevale House’s repurposing from a residential to a commercial property – the Department paid €1,195,040 in the first six months of 2023 alone for use of the property – should have required change-of-use planning permission.
As the house is a protected structure, it is not covered by Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s order last summer that vacant buildings could be used to house refugees without planning permission for five years.
In fact, Kildare County Council served an enforcement notice to the owners and developers last May, ordering them to ‘cease the unauthorised change of use of Ryevale House and associated outbuildings as a commercial multi-occupancy building and restore [it] to a single occupancy residence’ by November 10 last.
The notice was served to Me Libérer Ltd (the company that owns Ryevale House); its previous director Ronan Mallon; current director Ronan Holbrook; builder Derek Hallinan who oversees the daily running of the house; and Daire Turner – a Co. Wexford
‘Standards have just been utterly ignored’
accountant whose clients include numerous companies that provide emergency accommodation owned by Mr Mallon and Patrick Ward, another Leixlip resident.
Some of the current owners also have links to the Shipwright Pub, which was the subject of an arson attack on December 31 after word spread that it would be used to house asylum seekers.
The Ringsend pub had been bought for €3.4m in November by Gris Developments, whose sole shareholder is Ronan Holbrook and whose sole director is Ronan Mallon.
Building work was due to be carried out by Ryevale
Securities, ultimately owned by Loginima Holdings, whose sole shareholder is Patrick Ward.
Mr Ward, known locally as Paddy the Barber owing to his day job, is listed as director of