Roy Keane, a regular visitor to the Aviva Stadium, won’t have far to travel home after attending matches on Lansdowne Road. The former Republic of Ireland and Manchester United captain has bought an apartment in Lansdowne Place, a luxury development on the 6.8-acre site of the former Berkeley Court and Jurys hotels.
Keane and his wife, Theresa Doyle, agreed a deal for a property in the scheme, which has 215 apartments ranging in price from €825,000 to €6.5 million, just before Christmas. Although the footballer is based in Cheshire, where he and his family live in a 9,500sq ft mansion in Hale, he is a regular visitor to Rathpeacon, in Co Cork, where his mother lives. He is also regularly seen at GAA, rugby and soccer matches in Cork and Dublin.
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Keane declined to comment through his solicitor Comyn Kelleher Tobin, which handled the purchase. It is not known if he intends to use the apartment for himself or if it will be an investment property.
Other buyers in Lansdowne Place, developed by Joe O’Reilly’s Chartered Land, reportedly include the rock star Rod Stewart, who said in 2021 that he bought an apartment there so he could go out on his balcony and watch rugby and football crowds on a Saturday afternoon.
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Stephen Vernon of Green Property spent more than €5 million on a rooftop penthouse when the development first came on the market, in 2017, setting a record for an apartment in Dublin. That has since been surpassed by a larger penthouse at Lansdowne Place, whose purchasers paid €6.5 million in 2021.
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Buyers also include Niall Turley, the founder of CarTrawler, who made up to €100 million from selling a stake in his online car-rental business; the Voxpro founders Dan Kiely and Linda Green-Kiely, who sold a call-centre outsourcing business for €150 million in 2017; Louise Phelan, a former PayPal vice-president of global operations; and Kirkland Investments, controlled by the Limerick developer Robert Butler and his son, Rudi.
Overseas buyers include Ming-Wai Lau, a son of Joseph Lau, one of the richest people in Asia, and Irvine Laidlaw, a Scottish businessman and former member of the House of Lords.
Purchases have continued in the luxury development despite a number of lawsuits against Chartered Land alleging that some of the properties are uninhabitable because of sweltering internal temperatures. Six High Court actions have been initiated, with the plaintiffs demanding damages for breach of contract. They also want Copper Bridge C 2015 ICAV, an investment vehicle set up by O’Reilly to develop the properties, and O’Connor Sutton Cronin and Associates, the scheme’s engineer, to undertake “remedial” works to ease temperatures in the apartments.
Among those taking legal actions are Kirkland Investments; the businessman Alphonsus O’Mara; Noel McSweeney, chairman of Senator Windows; and Aideen O’Byrne, an executive coach.
