My jaw dropped, a 1k fine. Jesus this is some backward kip.

And you’d go to jail for not supporting the propaganda channels

It’s so aggravating considering it took decades of campaigning and court battles after the illegal demolition of the 18th century Drogheda Grammar School for the law to actually be changed, increasing the max fine that can be imposed from £10,000 to €1 million. €1,000 shows the sheer lack of regard for our listed buildings! Hopefully, as was the case of the Drogheda Grammar School, that the building will have to be reconstructed brick for brick.

We don’t have listed buildings, we have protected structures. Listed buildings is the British equivalent. Read the article again, this convent wasn’t a listed building so it won’t be rebuilt, and it happened ten years ago.
Our regime for protected structures is grossly unfair on owners. The structures are protected, supposedly, for the public good and benefit, but there is no financial compensation for that burden, apart from a Micky-mouse conservation grant scheme. The result is that protection becomes a nightmare for the owner, the structure becomes unsaleable, and it rapidly deteriorates, thanks to the so-called ‘protection’.
In Limerick, the Corporation deemed much of the Georgian quarter to be either protected structures, architectural conservation areas, or both. Then the mythical ‘Opera Centre’ proposal came along, and ran into a wall of procedural obstacles, meaning delay and expense. Eventually the developer shifted to a greenfield site on the edge of the city. The Corporation bought the site and announced grand plans for it. Then they found they had to walk over the very same banana-skins they had laid, and didn’t like it one bit. At one point, they even contemplated de-listing the properties they themselves now owned, because they found compliance with their own rules to be impossible.

The whole system needs revision.

it wasn’t listed.

So why was he fined at all if it wasn’t actually protected and he was within his rights?

John, the process for a structure to be officially added to the Record of Protected Structures can prove to be very lengthy, I.e. from the time it is brought to the attention of the local authority to the stage when it is added to the RPS and officially listed as a Protected Structure. During this period the structure is referred to as a “Proposed Protected Stricture” and is given the same full protection under law as those already designated as Protected Structures. It states in the article that proceedings for this structure to be added to the record were started in October and 2 weeks later it was demolished. Therefore the convent, although not officially on the record of protected structures, still had the same protection rules imposed on it as those listed on the record. I did jump the gun a bit without explaining the process, I hope this clears it up for you. And correct listed is a British term, perhaps I’m succumbing to British life here in England more than I’d like to admit.

177k seems very reasonable for a 3bed in that location. Hopefully they can fast track construction f the 143 new units given the shortage etc

Glen, you obviously know the detail of the process. Doubts have been expressed by leading planning barristers about the constitutionality of much of the 2000 PDA, only part of which was refers to the Supreme Court for evaluation. The rest of it is fair game for a challenge. A defending lawyer in a case like this is going to say. – until it is a protected structure, it isn’t one. The constitution protects property rights and only allows a restriction in accordance with law. The power to deem a structure to be protected is a reserved one, I.e. local authority members make the decision by resolution (not widely known) and a detailed process of prior notice must be scrupulously observed.
How much of that went on in the present case, in a two-week time frame, is the issue, probably very little. No local authority wants to be the Guinea pig in a constitutional action, where they could end up paying the costs either way win or lose, on the basis that it is a point of law of exceptional public importance etc.
Neither do local authorities like to take proceedings under the indictment route, which is where the big fines are open to the courts. I have my own ideas on why that is so, but not for this forum.

More…

The big question is still – why was it not protected under the 63 or 76 Acts? What was its zoning? Presumably some order of nuns owned it before it was sold as development land, and it may have been zoned as residential land. It seems that it only came in for consideration as a protected structure when a development proposal was made, and somebody probably did a site visit to check if the pink notice was erected etc.

Of course, the nuns would not have got as good a price for it if it had been protected, and if the land wasn’t zoned for development, and if the cartilage of the protected structure was defined as all the land, etc etc. Of course, in modern Ireland, that wouldn’t be the real story here, would it?

John Considine, I’m fairly certain that you need planning permission to demolish a building, that is why the developer was fined. The developer was bot within his rights he broke the law. Not every building which deserved protection is on the list, that is one of the reasons we have a requirement for planning permission, so that the property can be assessed before development.

Read my full sentence. He was within his rights to disregard any special status the building had, because it was not a protected structure at the relevant time. You are correct that planning permission is required for any works deemed to be ‘development’ as understood in planning law. Without full details of the conviction I can’t say what it concerned, but it seems that the developer was prosecuted (perhaps) for carrying out a development without planning permission, or alternatively perhaps for demolishing a habitable house without planning permission, which is also an offence.
The overall point, in the context of comments on an article that is all about protected structures and the wrongfulness of demolishing them, is still the fact that at the relevant time this structure was not protected and therefore the developer could not have been fined on that basis.
A fine of a grand puts the conviction in the same bracket as somebody who fits a few velux windows in their roof without planning permission, i.e. not a major historic piece of litigation, probably District Court too at that.

John two weeks after the council started proceedings to protect it they knocked it down. The dodgy git knew what he was up to.

They were in the process of listing it.

Where were they for the preceding 150 years?

Useless troll does useless job at trolling,

You’re trying too hard HOTBank.

Does it not worry you that there are 33 people who agree? Sarcasm is not trolling.

Search for National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.

John I just checked out the NIAH site and although it has a decent enough template the information contained for each building is minimal to say the least with brief historical summaries anyone could easily find online from other sources. It obviously comes from an architectural angle but I was referring to full historical detail and not just a sop to some EU directive which the whole effort seems to be and not just prominent buildings…what about tenement building details were the bulk of our ancestors lived? These records would be of enormous genealogical, educational and tourist interest generating their own income to sustain the data base.

I don’t know if that sort of detail exists anywhere, on of off line. Much was lost in the burning of the Four Courts. I have found amazing information on specific research projects in the National Library in old estate papers, for example the de Vesci Estate papers concerning lands around Abbeyleix, Durrow and Passage West. You need time and patience for that kind of work. You probably know about tithe applotment books, Griffith’s valuation etc. If you are interested in people and genealogy the website of the Latter Day Saints has unbelievable information, I have tried my own antecedents back to the 1700s with their data.

Genealogy is a great interest of mine and I know the pitfalls with Irish records. I would say you were lucky to get back to the 1700s but with an uncommon surname like Considine, if it is real, it’s a great help. Findmypast is well worth a month’s subscription also now especially with the indexed original image parish records for the whole country available.The problem for most is that one often gets bare names and sparse detail which is were a rich description of a street or it’s buildings come into the picture.