The former Dublin 4 home of bankrupt developer Sean Dunne and his millionaire wife Gayle Killilea has been placed on the market for €7million.
Ouragh is the 8,700sq ft Shrewsbury Road property Mr Dunne built on a 0.2 acre site he bought in 1999 for £3 million from Niall O’Farrell, founder of the Black Tie chain. He lived there with Killilea until 2007 when they left for France.
The sale, through Peter Kenny of Colliers, is on the instruction of joint receivers Michael Madden and Michael Coyle of HWBC Allsop, acting for Bank of Scotland. Bank of Scotland (Ireland) lent Mr Dunne €7 million for the house in 2002, and €5 million in 2007.
It follows a protracted legal process by Bank of Scotland to secure permission to seize and sell Ouragh. The bank had to secure permission from Connecticut’s bankruptcy court to drop the protection from creditors granted to Mr Dunne under US bankruptcy law.
The Carlow developer once known as the Baron of Ballsbridge spared no expense on the fit out of the palatial four-storey, five-bedroom home which was designed in keeping with its stately detached Victorian neighbours. It differs, however, in that Ouragh features a lift to all floors, a bar that wouldn’t be out of place in a four-star hotel, a gym with sauna and shower, and a ballroom-sized reception room that spans the width of the house with antique parquet flooring. Until recently it was leased by the couple to the South African embassy at a rent of €180,000 a year.
Mr Dunne valued the house at €7.5 million in financial statements to the court when he filed for bankruptcy in March 2013 owing €690 million, mostly to Ulster Bank and Nama.
He has said he had planned to transfer half of Ouragh to his wife as part of a 2005 agreement to give her €100 million in return for “love and affection”. However Ms Killilea didn’t put her name to the property after her husband borrowed a further €5 million against it in 2007, feeling she would have been liable for half or all of the debt on the house.
Ouragh is one of four properties on Dublin’s most expensive road in which Mr Dunne had an interest. In 2005 he gifted his wife €58 million to buy Walford, a nearby property – still the highest price ever paid for an Irish house.
Mr Dunne has also said he gave his wife €14 million from the sale of numbers 1 and 3 Shrewsbury Road to financier Derek Quinlan in 2006.
In 1998 Mr O’Farrell paid £3.6 million for the 0.41 acre site on which Ouragh and his own former home Thorndene stand, and a year later Mr Dunne paid £3 million for half of it (0.2 acre). A court case followed when he brought Mr O’Farrell to court over a dispute regarding the terms of the sale contract. Mr Dunne won and Mr O’Farrell had to pay the legal expenses of both sides.
