An elderly mother in a legal dispute with her youngest son over the demolition and subsequent development of a mews at the rear of her home in Dublin's Fitzwilliam Square has told the High Court she only intended lending the mews to her son, Arthur.
However, her son thought of the mews as his inheritance, Renee ffrench O'Carroll, said.
The court heard Arthur ffrench O'Carroll's interest in the mews property - a building housing the Diep Le Shaker restaurant at Pembroke Lane - is now worth €2 million.
Ms ffrench O'Carroll, a mother of five, said her son had exerted undue influence on her in getting her in 1989 to sign a 99- year lease for development of the mews premises and that she was shocked and very annoyed to later see the mews demolished in 1998 without her consent.
Mr ffrench O'Carroll has denied his mother's claims and has brought an appeal to the High Court against the Circuit Court decision last year which found the signing by Ms ffrench-O'Carroll in 1989 of the lease relating to the mews premises was procured by undue influence and that the lease was therefore null and void.
Ms ffrench O'Carroll told the court yesterday she had had to sell another house in Blackrock to fund legal costs.
Yesterday Mr Justice Thomas Smyth, who had urged the sides to try and resolve their differences, was told, after a full day of settlement talks, that the case would go on. The judge said the parties had had enough time to think about it and he would hear the case and give a decision according to the evidence and the law.
Cross-examined by George Brady SC, for Arthur ffrench O'Carroll, Ms ffrench O'Carroll said she had not been prepared to give her son the mews but rather to let him use it. Asked if she wanted to establish Arthur in life, she said she expected him to fail in two or three years.
"I was only loaning the mews. I was foolish. I did not want to give him the 99-year lease but I was told he would not get planning permission without it," she told the court.
"I told him it was not his inheritance and he would have to wait until I am dead to fight with his brothers and sisters. He was calling it his inheritance." When Mr Brady put to her that she was constantly told to get independent legal advice, she said: "I constantly believed in my son. He would tell me exactly what to do." She did not expect her son to stay with the project as "he did not stay with anything".
"It was not a question of getting Arthur settled. It was a question of getting him started," she said.
She agreed that she wanted to establish her son in life but said she knew it would not last. She did not want him to be too disappointed.
She had signed the lease reluctantly as she did not want to stand in his way, she said. She agreed that she knew what she was doing but thought it was only for a few years and that Arthur would change to something else. "He was always looking for something bigger," she said.
Ms ffrench O'Carroll came to Ireland in 1940. She was given the four-storey over basement house at 55 Fitzwilliam Square, with the mews at the rear opening on to Pembroke Lane, as a wedding gift on her marriage to Michael ffrench O'Carroll in 1944.
The couple had five children - Donal, Paul, Susanne, Marie Claire and Arthur - and separated in 1969. Ms ffrench O'Carroll said it was a French custom that a gift be given to children and it had always been her intention to divide her property equally between her children.
Arthur ffrench-O'Carroll, of Wellington Place, Clyde Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, has denied that he exerted undue influence on his mother in relation to the 1989 lease.
In an affidavit, he said his mother's account of the circumstances of execution of the lease was incorrect and a solicitor had fully explained to her the mean- ing and effect of the agreement.
The case continues.