Developer concerned Dublin land ownership dispute may affect future house sales

A company building a major housing development in south county Dublin is concerned further sales of the family homes may be affected by a dispute over ownership of a parcel of land in the area, it has been claimed in Commercial Court proceedings.

Ardstone Residential Partners ICAV is owner and project manager of the White Pines development of three and four-bed houses at Stocking Lane in Rathfarnham.

Businessman Gene Brady, of Bushy Park Road, Terenure, Dublin, has brought proceedings against Ardstone seeking declarations he is the owner of the disputed land along with damages for trespass and defamation of title.

Mr Brady says he was a director of a company called Viking Supplies (Ireland) which acquired the piece of land from another firm called Temple Properties in 1975. He says the deed of transfer did not reflect the area of land which Temple agreed to sell to Viking.

He says the true boundary to the land was marked by a fence which Temple had erected and which was removed by Ardstone.

Ardstone disputes his claim on grounds including the "extraordinary period of time" during which the alleged boundary error was not rectified. It also says it may ask the court to dismiss his case as frivolous and vexatious.

In the meantime, it successfully applied to have Mr Brady's action transferred into the High Court's fast track commercial division after arguing the orders sought by Mr Brady were highly significant in the light of the current stage of construction and marketing the White Pines development.

Ardstone director Stephen Cassidy says in an affidavit this is particularly significant because Mr Brady seeks orders ejecting his company from the disputed land and prohibiting any further development on it.

The land involved has 16 houses on it, each on sale for between €415,000 and €515,000 bringing the total market value to €7.35m, Mr Cassidy says.

Ardstone is "gravely concerned other sales, beyond the 16 directly affected houses, might also be detrimentally affected by the present claim, in particular, other houses within Phase 3", he says. Around €2.6m is a reasonable estimate of the investment already made into this portion of the development site, he says.