The High Court has granted a widow an injunction preventing developer Greg Kavanagh and his company Beakonford Ltd from trespassing on her property at Inchanappa House in Ashford, Co Wicklow.
Mr Justice Max Barrett also restrained the defendants from interfering with a looped driveway up to Oonagh Stokes’s Inchanappa home or from causing interference with the front gates to the property.
He further granted an injunction restraining trespass or interference with access to a communications mast site, owned by Ms Stokes and her company, which is next to Inchannappa.
The decision followed a four-day hearing of the injunction issues pending determination of Ms Stokes’s and Hibernian Cellular Networks’ full action against the defendants.
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The dispute arose over plans by Beakonford to build 98 homes next to Inchanappa House on land once owned by Ms Stokes’s late husband Brian, and which was later taken over by the National Asset Management Agency before it was sold to Mr Kavanagh’s company.
Earlier this year, An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for the Beakonford development.
Before that, Beakonford had sued Ms Stokes and another local woman claiming there had been an attempt to extract a payment of €6 million from the development company as part of an objection lodged against the planning application. Ms Stokes strongly denied the claims.
While that case has yet to be heard, some preliminary works were carried out at the Beakonford lands that Ms Stokes claimed interfered with her property and her access to the mast, which had been preserved when the lands were sold by her husband.
Ms Stokes brought two sets of proceedings, one seeking to stop trespass and interference on her land and the other challenging the An Bord Pleanála permission.
As part of the interference proceedings, she claimed Mr Kavanagh initially offered to buy Inchanappa House for €10 million but later offered a price that “fell well short” of his initial offer.
Mr Kavanagh and Beakonford have denied her claims.
In a ruling on Monday, Mr Justice Barrett said he would grant the injunction preventing interference with the looped driveway and the gates to the house but said the order will need to be worded in such a way that access to the Beakonford lands is not impeded.
He would be guided by the parties in relation to his order preventing interference with access to the mast as Mr Kavanagh had agreed during the hearing to put down a hard-core access along part of the route.
In relation to Ms Stokes application seeking to restrain Mr Kavanagh from sending alleged intimidatory communications to her, the judge said he would not grant that relief as it would entail a finding that he had sent intimidatory/harassing correspondence to her.
As Mr Kavanagh had agreed to contact her only through his solicitors, the judge said he would merely ask that he make this undertaking to the court.
An injunction had also been sought preventing the defendants from interfering with the supply from a water tank on the lands.
The judge said he was not aware there had been any such interference but he would grant an order maintaining the situation before the dispute began.
He said the order would have to be crafted in such a way that the defendants were not prevented from undertaking work on their own lands aimed at finding out where there are underground pipes.
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