Irish Life to spend €8m redeveloping Dublin headquarters

Insurance and investment company Irish Life is to spend €8 million on its Lower Abbey Street headquarters.

The company will apply today to Dublin City Council for permission to redesign and expand the public areas of the Irish Life Centre and demolish the former Salvation Army building on Abbey Street.

The centre was built in a number of large blocks in the 1970s and 1980s in a complex which stretches from Talbot Street to Abbey Street Lower and from Marlborough Street to Beresford Place.

The company wants to build on its "corporate social responsibility agenda " by creating "memorable spaces from which the community can benefit". It wants to relocate Oisín Kelly's Chariot of Life statue, from the centre of the plaza facing Beresford Place, where it is difficult to see from the street, to the front of the plaza on a new water feature.

It will also create a new civic plaza at Northumberland Square, by significantly widening Northumberland Place. This will involve the demolition of the 1913 Salvation Army Hall.

Distinctive building

The distinctive three-storey redbrick building has been vacant for about 10 years and was bought by Irish Life last year from the Salvation Army.

Although more than 100 years old and one of the older buildings on this stretch of Abbey Street, it is not a protected structure. Another building, constructed as part of the centre, will also be demolished.

Irish Life plans to change routes into and out of the centre’s public car park. The entrance and exit points will switch, with traffic coming in from Gardiner Street and leaving via Lower Abbey Street so car park users arriving from the south will no longer need to do a loop via Talbot Street.

The company expects works to be substantially complete by the end of this year.