{"id":483382,"date":"2026-06-04T21:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/483382\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T21:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:47:08","slug":"egregious-disregard-for-planning-laws-developer-ordered-to-take-down-29-modular-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/483382\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Egregious disregard for planning laws’: Developer ordered to take down 29 modular homes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Court has ordered a developer to take down 29 modular homes that were built in a highly sensitive area and believed to have been earmarked for an IPAS centre.<\/p>\n

A withering judgement described the unauthorised development in Wicklow as \u201ca particularly egregious case of disregard for planning laws\u201d, and referenced George Orwell\u2019s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four where people were told \u201cto reject the evidence before your eyes”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The development was being constructed by a company run by developer Paddy Byrne<\/a>, who had previously built an estate in Kildare that had major fire safety defects and had been accused by a bankruptcy official of trying to \u201ccheat creditors\u201d.<\/p>\n

He was developing Chianti Park on a site formerly used as a mobile home park in an area zoned to \u201cprotect and enhance the outstanding natural character of the Dublin mountains area\u201d.<\/p>\n

The mobile home use dated back to the 1970s, but Byrne demolished the existing units, which had fallen into disrepair, and went on to lay foundations and construct a number of modular units on the site.<\/p>\n

He argued that the construction of the modular units was exempt from planning permission on the basis that permission had previously been granted to the mobile home units.<\/p>\n

In his judgment, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys presented two photographs \u2014 one of a mobile home and the other of a modular unit \u2014 noting that \u201cany reasonable person would plainly see that they are different structures\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe type of structure that was previously located on the lands.\"WhatWhat is now on the lands \u2013 a completely different structure, a dwelling house.<\/p>\n

Despite this, the case was made that they were identical, which the judge likened to \u201cgaslighting on a monumental scale\u201d.<\/p>\n

The High Court heard that work did not cease after instructions from South Dublin County Council; instead, work accelerated until it was eventually halted by court order late last year.<\/p>\n

Mr Justice Humphreys ruled that the developer had displayed \u201cunbelievable chutzpah\u201d in his handling of the matter.<\/p>\n

The judge rejected a suggestion that any breach of the planning law was simply an innocent mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is as far from innocence as you can get \u2014 this was an attempt to create a fait accompli with a view to turning around and defiantly asking the system, in effect, ‘what are you going to do about it?’<\/p>\n

“I suppose like many other people who defy planning law, the respondents are now going to find out,\u201d said Mr Justice Humphreys.<\/p>\n

Byrne was developing the site on behalf of the owners in his third development vehicle, Banarch Developments, following the bankruptcy and dissolution of the previous two.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last September, he wrote a personal letter to councillors pleading with them to allow him to proceed and denying that the site was being designed as an IPAS centre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A fire on the site that month was investigated by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.<\/p>\n

The High Court ruling confirmed an order issued by the Circuit Court last year after South Dublin County Council and a local resident brought action to halt the development and have it dismantled.<\/p>\n

One of Byrne’s previous projects was the construction of Millfield Manor in Newbridge, Co Kildare<\/a>. In 2015 a fire that razed a terrace of homes in the estate prompted investigation that showed there were major fire defects present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court has ordered a developer to take down 29 modular homes that were built in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,42,807,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-483382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-courts","tag-headlines","tag-housing","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}