Cuckoo fund CEO needed retention for holiday home
THE head of the largest cuckoo fund operating in Ireland began building a 112 square metre addition to her holiday home before seeking planning permission, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Planning files show that the addition to Margaret Sweeney’s home – a standalone two-bed unit with a games room – would have almost doubled the size of the original 125 square metre property.
In an indication of the scale of the extension, the average size of all homes in Ireland is 81 square metres.
According to planning records, Ms Sweeney, the chief of the I-RES REIT fund, sought permission to retain and complete the development in June 2010.
The application was also in the name of her husband, Paraic Lavelle, a long-serving member of the Defence Forces.
However, when council officials arrived to inspect the site at Derrylahan near the village of Kilcar, Co. Donegal, they found the extension half built.
It was ‘evident that works were ongoing on site’ they reported and ‘as a result ‘damage had occurred to the existing road’.
Planning officials noted: ‘The development for which retention and completion is being sought is currently half built on site.’
Plans for the unit, located in the garden behind the main house, involved a games room on the ground floor and a two-bed unit on the first floor. The living area was to be composed of two bedrooms, a kitchenette, a bathroom and sitting room.
The games room included space for a sitting area and a bathroom.
Refusing permission, council planners said ‘the principle of an additional second dwelling on the site of an existing dwelling is contentious’.
In particular they objected because it might breach waste water guidelines for the existing septic tank on the property. ‘The applicant has not demonstrated that he has a housing need in the area … or that there is justification for a holiday home,’ the planners concluded.
The council also said to allow the development would ‘set an undesirable precedent for future development’.
Nevertheless, in November 2010 the council approved a revised plan in which the bedrooms and living area were omitted and replaced with a ‘storage room’ of the same size.
Ms Sweeney also increased her property holding in the area with the purchase of a thatched pub in the village of Kilcar on the Wild Atlantic way.
In need of refurbishment, the pub was bought for €40,000 in February 2021 and is controlled via Weepridge Ltd – a firm jointly owned by Ms Sweeney and her husband.