The Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Ms Sile de Valera, has recommended that South Dublin County Council refuse planning permission for the redevelopment of Riversdale House in Rathfarnham. The council is due to decide today on a planning application for the demolition of the property which was the final residence of William Butler Yeats.
The developers, Begley Court, have applied to build 28 apartments on the four-acre site at the foot of the Dublin mountains.
The campaign against demolition was undertaken by 18 of the State's leading writers including Mr Brendan Kennelly and Mr Terence Brown, who described the proposed demolition as an "act of cultural vandalism".
Following publicity in The Irish Times, protests at the demolition were received from the United States, New Zealand and Canada.
Yeats took a 13-year lease on the property in 1932 and lived there with his wife, George, and two children, Anne and Michael. Two poems in the book New Poems, published in 1938 are about Riversdale, An Acre of Grass and What Then?
In What Then? Yeats wrote:
"All his happier dreams came true -/A small house, wife, daughter, son,/Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,/Poets and Wits about him drew;/ `What then?' sang Plato's ghost, `What then?'"
The house was also the setting for the final meeting between Yeats and Maud Gonne in 1938.
Two officials from the Ms de Valera's Department visited the property in recent weeks to determine its architectural and historical value.
On their advise, the Minister wrote to the council last Friday with the recommendation that "the present planning application be rejected".
In her letter she recommended that Riversdale be included in the record of protected structures "so that the special character of the property can be safeguarded for the future".
This new protection means any work undertaken on the property must not affect the special architectural or historical character of Riversdale.
Ms de Valera's letter is likely to be read to councillors attending today's meeting. Given the recent publicity and the Minister's intervention, the councillors are expected to refuse the planning permission. It was unclear what action Begley Court may take in the event of a negative outcome to its application.