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Developer claims appeal over plans for 98 Wicklow homes is to extract €6m sum

Withdrawal of appeal with planning board sought

The Four Courts. Developer Greg Kavanagh has claimed in High Court proceedings that a planning appeal brought over his company’s plans for 98 homes in Ashford, Co Wicklow, has been done to extract a payment of €6 million from the development company. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

Mon Nov 6 2023 - 20:03

Developer Greg Kavanagh has claimed in High Court proceedings that a planning appeal brought over his company’s plans for 98 homes in Ashford, Co Wicklow, has been done to extract a payment of €6 million from the development company.

Beakonford Ltd, of which Mr Kavanagh is a director, has brought an action against local residents Oonagh Stokes and Barbara Wilding seeking an order that an appeal lodged with An Bord Pleanála over the proposed development at Inchanappa South must be withdrawn.

It is claimed the appeal is not a bona-fide planning objection and is in fact a “device for the purposes of demanding money without any basis”.

The claims are denied.

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Ms Stokes lives in the adjoining Inchanappa House, while Ms Wilding lives at Rossana, Ashford. Ms Wilding is a third-party appellant in the case before An Bord Pleanála against the permission granted for the 98 homes by Wicklow County Council in June last year.

Beakonford claims Ms Wilding has been acting on her behalf and/or on the agent or “alter ego” for Ms Stokes in lodging the planning objection.

The case came before the Commercial Court on Monday when Mr Justice Denis McDonald asked that a further affidavit be filed and adjourned it for a week.

Martin Hayden SC, for Beakonford, said the application to admit the case to the fast-track commercial list was not opposed by Ms Stokes and, while Ms Wilding had been served with the papers and there had been contact with her by phone, she had not put in an appearance.

Beakonford also seeks, among other things, a declaration that the planning appeal was lodged “for the sole purpose of seeking to extort money” from the company on behalf of Ms Stokes and Ms Wilding.

In an affidavit seeking entry of the case to the commercial list, Mr Kavanagh, of Bath Avenue, Dublin 4, said the 98 homes were part of what is to be a larger 500-home development with a value of about €51.5 million.

He said Beakonford bought the land with borrowed money and is currently paying €1 million per annum on two loans for €14 million.

The planning objection is preventing the company from either developing or selling the land. It is currently fielding offers of €9.1 million and €10 million for sale of part of the development lands, he said.

Mr Kavanagh said that after the planning objection was lodged, he contacted Ms Wilding to discuss the appeal but she directed him to Ms Stokes, which surprised and confused him.

Ms Stokes, in a third-party observation on the plan, objected to it because it would result in the “unsustainable growth of Ashford”.

However, Mr Kavanagh said, this was at complete odds with a proposal made by Ms Stokes’s agent in August 2022 when it was stated that Ms Stokes was to sell certain lands to maximise density and, in return, she would receive a lump sum up front and then “a payout per unit” when they had been sold.

He said he met Ms Stokes and her agent in the Stillorgan Park Hotel in September 2022 when they told him they would “never allow development on the lands if they were not part of it”.

He said he was left in no doubt that if Beakonford did not give Ms Stokes what she wanted she would do everything she could to delay and frustrate the development.

He said his agent later put in writing to Ms Stokes’s agent the terms of what had been proposed at that meeting including payments of between €6,000 and €20,000 per house on the close of each sale with a cap on total payments of €6 million.

Mr Kavanagh said Ms Stokes’s agent responded by saying the €6 million cap be removed. He said nowhere in the suggested amendments to the discussed proposals did Ms Stokes say she was unable or unwilling to get Ms Wilding to withdraw the objection.

It was clear Ms Wilding’s planning appeal was not lodged on the basis of legitimate bona-fide planning concerns but to assist Ms Stokes in structuring a transaction of the sale of the Stokes home, Inchanappa House “in a manner that would siphon money directly from the planning application residential scheme”.

As An Bord Pleanála has indicated it will take about a year to give a decision on the appeal, Beakonford was forced to issue proceedings, he said.

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