The owners of an unauthorised refugee village insist they have permission for work currently being done on the estate – despite an enforcement order for demolition on part of the site. Photographic evidence obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday in recent weeks shows large tracts of soil and stones being excavated and moved around by an industrial-sized digger. Earlier this year, the MoS revealed how the owners of Kippure Manor Estate in Blessington, Co.
Wicklow, built an entire new development to house asylum seekers without any planning permission. Wicklow County Council subsequently issued an enforcement notice to the owners of the estate and a firm – whose directors have already been paid more than €50m from lucrative State contracts –ordering a halt on ‘unauthorised’ works on the site. The works were carried out a few hundred metres from where 51 houses were built without planning permission.
Asked to explain the work being carried out on the site, the owners of the estate, through high-priced PR firm Murray Consultants, at first declined to comment. But when informed of the photographs showing the work, they changed tack. The PR spokesman then issued a statement: ‘The works being carried out at Kippure Lodge and Holiday Village at present have planning permission.
’ Pressed on the details of that permission, the spokesman repeatedly declined to provide any. No current planning application or active permission was discovered in a search of planning records i.