The honourable Garech Browne, a member of the Guinness brewing family, has sold over 1,600 acres of his Wicklow estate, Luggala, to the Government for €1.725 million.
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Dick Roche last night announced the purchase of an area the size of Phoenix Park from the 5,000-acre Luggala estate. It will provide a significant new extension to the Wicklow Mountains National Park and open up further tracts to the public.
The price paid is less than €10,000 an acre - the going rate for land with no development potential.
"It's only a little bit of a land" Mr Browne told The Irish Times yesterday, "but it's of some strategic importance. It's something I've wanted to do from the very beginning," he said. "It will have no effect on Luggala."
The tract of land brings the total area of Wicklow Mountains National Park to 17,650 hectares.
The land purchased links the two previously separated main blocks of Wicklow Mountains National Park, giving a continuous area of national parkland along the spine of the Wicklow Mountains from the Feather Beds on the Dublin border to Baravore, just short of Lugnaquillia mountain. The land runs from the Sally Gap and is bordered by the Military Road (R115) on the east and the Carrigvore-Gravale ridge on the west.
Mr Browne, who once managed the Chieftains, is believed to have first offered the land to the State many years ago but the OPW did not proceed with the deal.
However Mr Roche, as a local TD, is believed to have pursued the issue and concluded a deal with the peer, who divides his time between the fairytale gothic house at Luggala and homes in London, Paris and India. He is married to Princess Purna Harshad, daughter of the maharajah of Morvi. The couple, who count U2, Mick Jagger and Séamus Heaney among their friends, are known for their hospitality at the Wicklow estate, where a housemaid is reputed to have once cleaned a Magritte painting using Vim.
The Luggala lands are part of the Wicklow uplands, an area of European importance for habitats and species under the EU Habitats Directive.
The lands contain a mixture of blanket bog, wet heath and dry heath habitats. This area is important for many bird species, including merlin, peregrine falcon and grouse.
The deal with the Government comes a decade after Mr Browne successfully blocked an attempt by the OPW to build an interpretive centre at Luggala.
The OPW had spent around €2 million, most of it in EU funding, on the foundations for the centre which then had to be demolished at considerable cost.
This acquisition consolidates existing public access to the area, which includes the ridge from Sally Gap to Mullagcleevaun via Carrigvore, Gravale and Duff Hill, which is very popular with hill walkers.
The Minister said yesterday that he is particularly pleased at the "extremely positive role" that Garech Browne has played in the acquisition of this land.
"It is a vital acquisition as up to now the Wicklow national park has been two separate blocks - now it will be one."