The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) has been granted an order allowing its solicitor to be appointed receiver of five properties owned by convicted drug trafficker John Gilligan and his family.
They include the Jessbrook equestrian centre, in Co Kildare, with a house and lands beside it, as well as two houses in Lucan and another in Blanchardstown, west Dublin.
The High Court had previously found the properties were bought with the proceeds of crime. Cab obtained an order in 1996 freezing Gilligan's assets.
In the High Court today, Mr Justice Kevin Feeney said his primary concern in granting the Cab receivership was to ensure the preservation of the properties and to have them fully insured.
Gilligan (55), who is serving a 20-year sentence for drug dealing, was in a courtroom for the judgment after more than two weeks of hearings, which saw accusations about the murder of Veronica Guerin thrust back into the media spotlight.
Gilligan represented himself during court hearings last week because he discharged his lawyers on the first day of the case.
He contested the right of the Cab to make this latest application because he argued there was a pending appeal to the Supreme Court against an order made freezing his assets.
He said he now owns nothing, that he had signed over Jessbrook to his ex-wife Geraldine in 1995 and that his name was included in error on legal documents relating to the Lucan homes that he had helped his son Darren and daughter Tracey to buy.
The inclusion of his name on legal documents connected with the houses was because of a mistake by his solicitor at the time, he said.
When his children bought the Lucan houses, he said he had asked the solicitor to make sure he could be notified if any attempt was made by them to have a loan taken out on the properties. This was because Darren was on drugs and Tracey's partner at the time was "a conman", Gilligan said.
In the latest round of what the judge branded a "tangled history of litigation" involving the properties, Gilligan's wife Geraldine and his son Darren have been allowed to stay at two of the houses.
Mrs Gilligan had told the court she lived at the home in the Jessbrook estate when not staying with her daughter Tracey, who runs the Judge's Chamber bar in Alicante, Spain.
Darren Gilligan testified in an affidavit that he lived at the house at Corduff Avenue in Blanchardstown while renting out one of the other houses he owns with his father, at Weston Green, Lucan.
Judge Feeney said they could continue to live in their homes as normal but CAB solicitor Francis Cassidy would be the legal caretaker of the properties until ownership has been decided.
A number of court applications and challenges relating to the assets are outstanding in a protracted legal tousle between the CAB and the Gilligans.
Gilligan, who represented himself in the latest hearings after sacking his legal team, claimed the only reason he was being pursued was because of the Guerin murder.
He was cleared of the crime reporter's killing but was sentenced to 20 years in jail for drug trafficking.