Building a house without planning permission is “quite rare”, according to architects and planning experts, not least because it runs the risk of being demolished, as happened this week in Co Meath.
The issue has come sharply into focus after the demolition on Monday of a house near Navan that was built 20 years ago without the approval of Meath County Council.
The large house in Bohermeen was built by Chris (otherwise known as Michael) and Rose Murray in 2006, despite the couple having been refused permission by the local authority.
“Meath County Council was first notified [in 2007] of a 588sq m house built on a site where planning permission for a substantially smaller 283sq m house had been refused six months earlier in 2006,” the council said in a statement.
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“In my professional opinion, anyone who builds anything without planning permission is not thinking clearly,” said Darren McElroy of architects D McElroy Designs in Navan, Co Meath.
The council was “100 per cent” correct to refuse retention and insist the house be demolished, he said.
“If you let them get away with it, everybody else would start acting up and trying to take advantage. You can’t really set a precedent for it,” he said.
“So, in my opinion, Meath County Council were dead right to demolish it.”
While he does not know of other cases of large houses built without planning permission, he did have a client recently who had built a “small apartment” in their back garden only for their neighbours to lodge a complaint.
“They approached me to apply for retention [permission] but they just didn’t have enough back garden left and the council refused them permission and they had to knock that down – the €40,000 or whatever it cost to build that granny flat just gone.”
Planning specialist Shane Mulqueen, of Mulqueen Consulting Engineers in Oranmore, Co Galway, believes those who build without planning must face the music.
“If a person blatantly ignores the requirements to apply for planning permission to build a structure, there has to be consequences for their actions,” he said.
He cannot recall another instance of a residential property being demolished because it had not been granted planning permission.
“The whole industry is talking” about the Meath case, said another planning expert, who did not want their name published They described building an entire house without planning as “a wild move”.
A Dublin architect, who declined to be identified, said he was aware of a number of cases where Fingal County Council refused retention permission for “Seomra-type” living spaces built in back gardens that have had to be knocked down.
“A lot of money goes into these things, 40 or 50 grand,” he said.
The vast bulk of residential structures that are the subject of retention applications are house extensions or garages built in breach of the planning rules, according to experts in the area. Often the breaches are the result of ignorance.
In most instances, the difficulties can be resolved with the local council, they said.
Robert Nowlan, of RW Nowlan chartered planning and development consultants in Dublin, said different councils have different levels of resources in their enforcement departments and can be more or less active.
At the time of the property bust, he said, he dealt with a number of receivers’ property portfolios, some of which included houses built without planning permission.
None was knocked down but the value of the hosues was affected, with sales often being restricted to cash buyers.
Structures being built without planning permission, or in contravention of planning rules, are safe from enforcement action if it is not initiated within seven years of building.
However, when it comes to the property being sold, planning deficiencies can hinder sales or put buyers off, often affecting the value of the property, according to experts.
Sometimes, houses built in contravention of planning laws “are just left” and become “a no-value house”, said a rural engineer who didn’t want to be named.
Often these are two-storey structures built after permission had been secured for a dormer bungalow.
“Demolition is very rare,” he said. “In my opinion, Meath County Council were making an example of that couple.”
