Fingal County Council has given a clear indication that it will seek to place severe limits on the development of housing on the Abbeville estate formerly owned by former taoiseach Mr Charles Haughey.
In a report on its view of the development of Abbeville, drawn up in recent days, Fingal County Council suggested that its core objective would be to see the retention of the demesne "as a single identifiable entity".
The Dublin house-building firm, Manor Park Homes, last year bought the 230-acre Abbeville estate from the former taoiseach in a deal estimated to be worth around €45 million.
Manor Park Homes has been engaged in pre-planning discussions with the council for some months, and it is understood to be drawing up proposals for the development of a hotel, a golf course, holiday homes and residential housing on the site.
However, Fingal County Council has now indicated that it would like to see Abbeville developed along the lines of another major estate, Luttrelstown in west Dublin, where last year An Bord Pleanála gave the go-ahead for 60 houses and 16 holiday homes as well as a hotel.
In its report entitled "The Planing Authority's view of the development of the Abbeville Demesne", the council said that the former Haughey estate lies in the green belt surrounding and separating Malahide from its adjoining identifiable settlements of Kinsealy and beyond.
"In the normal course it would not be eligible for development at all were it not for two distinct factors in the evolution of planning policy as applied to the development of Fingal.
"These are: the provision in the 1999 Development Plan, whereby exceptions to the restrictions on development of the rural and green-belt areas of the county are considered where tourism -related uses are proposed, and the protected structure status of Abbeville House itself, its attendant out-buildings and the curtilage of all those structures, and the need to ensure economic uses for the place to secure their continued existence and upkeep."
The Fingal County Council report states that the assessment of the merits of proposals for the development of Abbeville will follow a series of steps.
It says that the most important of these will be that, "all development must respect the retention of the demesne as a single identifiable entity".
It maintains that Abbeville House and the attendant outbuildings and structures will have primary importance over all other developments in the demesne, and that the character of the identified historic landscape will be retained regardless of all other uses.
It says that other uses will be assessed against their contribution to on-going retention and support of the demesne and house.
"The pattern, scale and type of development will be expected to broadly follow that applied in the other examples of this kind of development elsewhere in the county," the Fingal County Council report states.
