Former Paddy Power boss buys €10m house in Dartry

Former Paddy Power boss Patrick Kennedy has purchased a substantial Victorian property in Dartry, Dublin 6, for €10.225 million. Alston, 19 Temple Road – one of the area's finest homes – was sold in May in a quiet off-market deal. It is the highest price paid for a residential property in the State so far this year. The property, on one acre, was sold by barrister Vincent Foley and his wife, Helen, who have lived there since the late 1980s.

The transaction appears under two entries on the Residential Property Price Register in respect of the house, one at €8.725 million and another at €1.5 million. It’s likely the larger payment is for the main house and the other for an adjoining coach house.The sale of Alston is just shy of the €10 million paid last year for number 1 Sorrento Terrace, Dalkey, long hailed as Dublin’s most expensive property.

Mr Kennedy is trading up from a period home where he lives with his family nearby on Palmerston Road. He resigned from his position after 10 years as chief executive of Paddy Power in early 2015 when his stake in the company was valued at more than €55 million. He has since taken a role as non-executive chairman of online car software company Cartrawler.ie, and he is deputy governor of the Bank of Ireland.

Though the gardens on the easterly half of Temple Road, where Alston is located, are north facing, they are amongst the largest in Dublin city – and the houses are more like country homes than townhouses.

Though the sale of Alston was conducted privately, it's understood it was facilitated by Sherry FitzGerald director Geralyn Byrne, acting for the vendors. Ms Byrne refused to comment on the deal. She has been involved in a number of high-end sales in Dartry in recent times, most notably in Temple Gardens, where she sold number 5, the family home of the late barrister and former attorney general Rory Brady, earlier this year for €6.5million. More recently, Subiaco, 1 Temple Gardens, sold for a sum believed to be more than €5 million on an asking price of €4.95 million. The sale price has not yet appeared on the Residential Property Price Register.

The last time the road saw a transaction hit double digits was back in 2004, when Sherry FitzGerald sold a home across the street privately to Maplewood Development's Michael Whelan for a reported €10 million. The house was the highest sale of that year and set a new record for a Dublin 6 home.

Houses on Temple Road are rarely offered for sale, although High Cross, another substantial house on the street, has been on the market since last year asking around €6.95 million through Knight Frank.

The Kennedy family's new neighbours will include Campbell's soup billionaire John Dorrance III (two doors down) and Cuisine de France founder Ronan McNamee.