‘This will go on and on ’
Pat Kenny’s Dalkey neighbours are fed up with planning battles
IT’S an idyllic and expensive little patch of south Dublin where most could only dream of living
But this weekend, there was a weariness about the residents of Harbour Road, Dalkey as round two of Pat Kenny versus the Charleton family loomed.
‘I’m sick of the whole bloody lot of it,’ said one irate elderly man.
‘I was sick of it 10 years ago and I’m sick of it now. I just wish planners and developers would go away and the neighbours would take their rows elsewhere,’ he said.
The ‘It’ in question was a highly public and personal spat between the broadcaster and his solicitor
‘It is going to cause havoc for us here’
neighbour, Gerry Charleton 10 years ago, the effects of which are still being felt.
That case ended in the courts and Mr Kenny was forced to pay Mr Charleton €2m for a patch of land that he originally claimed to own.
Gerry Charleton died three years ago, and the Charleton family sold their home, Maple Tree House for €3.17m to a developer.
Bartra Properties, owned by Richard Barrett, has now applied for permission to build three apartment blocks and seven houses on the tiny 1.5 acre site which abutts Mr Kenny’s house, the Anchorage,
The company has also acquired a neighbouring site called Yonder on Ulverton Road, sold to them by Charleton’s daughter Gearoidín and her husband Corry McMahon.
It is, speculated another elderly resident, Gerry Charleton’s final revenge on the Kenny family.
‘It’s very possibly a last two fingers from Gerry to Kenny. All I know is if that the development goes ahead, it is going to cause havoc for us here,’ he said.
‘Yes, people need houses, but these are luxury homes and cramming them into this tiny space isn’t going to work.
‘Years ago, they might have put one house on that site, maybe two at a stretch. Now they want to put 26 homes there. It’s over the top.’
Mr Kenny and his wife Cathy lodged a 16-page document objecting to the proposed development.
The Kennys oppose the plan on a number of grounds – density, scale and massing, design, traffic impact, effect on trees and habitat and residential amenity.
At least 12 other objections have been also been lodged and in this, at least, the neighbours appear united.
This weekend, an official removed the planning notice from the site, as the five-week period for making objections has elapsed.
One resident said it will not be the last planning sign on the site.
‘This will go on and on and on,’ he said.
Meanwhile, a friend of Gerry Charleton’s says the family’s decision to sell and the resulting trauma for the Kenny family was ‘no accident’.
‘This will all have been thought out. Gerry was a meticulous man, he had a brilliant legal mind, there was nothing about the law he didn’t know.
‘When Kenny came up against him, well that was always going to be an uneven match. There was only going to be one winner.’
‘There was only going to be one winner’