Last week, I reported on the withdrawal of an application from Courtyard Properties for an exemption to place an IPAS centre in the Little Sisters of the Assumption former convent building at Patrickswell Place, Finglas.
A letter sent to the local National Party representative Stephen Redmond appeared to contain a notice of the withdrawal.
Up until this afternoon there was no notification of a withdrawal. This morning I contacted the planning department at Dublin City Council noting that the withdrawal had not been registered on their planning site, and asked them if they could “confirm that an application registered on May 2 from Courtyard Properties has been withdrawn and that this was notified to the planning authority on May 21.”
I received an automatic response promising a reply within two business days then a few hours later they updated the page to note that the application had been withdrawn.
The other apparent mystery surrounding the old convent building was whether the site may be up for sale. The property is still registered as being owned by the Little Sisters of the Assumption.
I contacted them last Thursday to inquire if the property was still in their ownership or had it been sold. I received a reply from the Little Sisters of the Assumption on Sunday evening which informed me that “The property sale is still ongoing at present and it is legally our property until the sale is completed.”
Although the withdrawal of the application had not yet been posted on the Dublin City Council planning site up until early this afternoon, it has now been registered as withdrawn dated May 21.
As my original report stated, people who live close to the old convent were aware that last year that staff from the Peter McVerry Trust had visited the site and it was believed that the Trust was considering making use of, or purchasing outright, the building for use as emergency accommodation for homeless people there.
The Little Sisters of the Assumption have confirmed that the old convent building is currently in the process of being sold.
In the light of that I asked the Peter McVerry Trust if the Trust might have been or was still interested in purchasing the property now that it was confirmed that it was indeed on the market or that a sale was apparently being finalised. I received a response from them yesterday morning which merely stated that “we won’t be providing a comment.”
I had thought that the McVerry Trust’s property buying days might have ended when the Trust was basically bailed out by the state to the tune of €15 million in 2023. Today it is reported, in the Irish Times by Arthur Beesley, that Dublin City Council provided the Trust with more than €6 million in 2022 under the Capital Assistance Scheme (CAS) to buy the former Latchford’s Hotel on Baggot Street.
That, of course, was before the financial troubles that beset the Trust became known. Much of the trouble in which they found themselves was connected to its purchase of a significant number of properties which greatly boosted its assets but also its debts.
There is also the fact that the possible future use of the building is still not clear following the apparent withdrawal of one application for an exemption as an IPAS centre. There is no evidence at all that the Peter McVerry Trust might be considering such a move.
However it has drawn down millions already in asylum accommodation payments. It has continued to receive such payments despite being basically in state control and in 2024 received another €1,493,790.
Not the first nor the only example of a company that is being allowed to basically pay off debts through taxpayers money channelled through the Department of Integration.
Interestingly I have been sent a copy of a letter, recently provided to National Party Representative Stephen Redmond, which purported to be sent by Staunton Henderson architects, and which claimed that the application for a declaration that the property in question was exempted for change of use under Class 20F as defined in Statutory Instrument 376/2023 had been withdrawn. .
There are a number of odd aspects to the letter, not least of which is the misspelling of withdrawal on the subject line. The most obvious is that the emailed letter was sent to planning@dublincoco.ie. Two things jump out in relation to this. Firstly, dublincoco.ie is an old address for Dublin County Council, who have no part of this application and in fact no longer exists as it was divided into the existing councils of Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown. Finglas is in the Dublin City Council area and it is DCC with whom the application was registered.
The second thing to note is that when a person sends an email to planning@dublincoco.ie – as I did – they will be informed that the email could not be delivered because the domain dublincoco.ie could not be found. The application number on the emailed letter – 081025 – is not the same as the application number registered with Dublin City Council – 0180/25.
It seems highly unlikely that anyone in Staunton Henderson would have written a letter containing such obvious errors, but I contacted Staunton Henderson by email – a different one to that from which the notification of withdrawal was sent – asking them “if the notification of withdrawal was sent by yourselves and received by Dublin City Council planning.” I also forwarded them a copy of the letter asking them to confirm that they had sent it. I had received no response prior to publication.
Redmond himself has stated that “all doubts about the application for an exemption and the sale of the convent need to be clarified in the face of community concerns.”