ONE of Dublin's best known bars, The Horse Show House, opposite the RDS at Merrion Road in Ballsbridge, is to close if the planners allow it to be replaced by a four- and five-storey office building over a basement car park.

The latest planning application from the Madigan Group does not include provision for a replacement bar. It does, however, provide for the retention of the adjoining two-storey house which is a listed building and is used as offices. The new office building will have 30,000 sq ft of space. An earlier planning permission for an office development and a new bar was successfully appealed to An Bord Pleanala by the Irish Georgian Society.