House row family’s plans
Father and son want to build on land beside doomed home
A FAMILY ordered to vacate their home pending a demolition order two years ago have applied for planning permission to build two new houses on adjacent lands.
Michael and Rose Murray, who own land in Faughan Hill, Bohermeen near Navan, had been embroiled in a lengthy court battle in a bid to save their five-bedroom house, which Meath County Council said was built without planning permission.
They were given two years to vacate the 588sqm house in September 2020 ahead of the order coming into force next month.
It has emerged that two separate planning applications have been lodged for identical houses on land owned by the Murray family.
According to planning documents, Michael Murray – also known as Chris – and his son
Odhrán are seeking permission to build a ‘storey-and-a-half-style dwelling house, detached domestic garage, wastewater disposal system, new site entrance and all associated site works’ on the lands owned by Rose Murray.
The area in question lies immediately to the south and south-west of the property due to be vacated next month.
The Murray family’s original planning application for the contested property was made in 2006, when they applied for a 283 sqm ‘dormer-style bungalow’ on land that they had bought from a farmer. After they were refused permission, they built their current house – which is nearly twice the size – which, according to the council was without planning permission or appealing the previous case
Planning documents show that Murray applied for permission to retain the property and its associated amenities in 2007, which was refused after appeal.
Another plan to demolish a single-storey living area, and the property’s carport, in order to reduce the size of the house was also refused after an appeal in 2008.
The family were originally ordered to demolish the house within two years in 2010 after a High Court case brought by Meath County Council.
The Murrays subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court in 2017, which agreed with the High Court decision and gave the family a one-year stay of execution.
However, when the family refused to leave the property, Meath County Council took a further High Court action.
In 2020, the High Court gave the couple until September 24, 2022 to vacate the property ahead of its demolition. Two years earlier, in a letter sent to local councillors and published in full in the Meath Chronicle, the Murray family claimed that the demolition order would result in ‘six people being made homeless’.
The family also said that the threat of their house being demolished was akin to living ‘every day with the horror that someday a crane with a wrecking ball could arrive up to our home and level it to the ground’.
The Murray family did not return attempts to contact them for comment this week.