ISE wants National Wax Museum operators out of building

The Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) wants the operators of the National Wax Museum to vacate its landmark premises in Dublin to facilitate a €10m ISE redevelopment project, the Commercial Court has heard.

The ISE says the company which runs the museum, KF Internet Software, should deliver up possession of the Armoury Building in Foster Place, College Green, which housed the Irish House of Lords until it was abolished by the Act of Union in 1800.

The ISE bought the building for €2.7m last June from the Lord Partnership, which had rented it out to the wax museum under licence.

The ISE wants it to facilitate the redevelopment of its adjacent Anglesea St headquarters in which the Armoury Building will be incorporated into a single campus and to cater for a 50% rise in staff numbers.

Aileen O’Donoghue, ISE director of strategy, policy, and communications, said in an affidavit that the museum operators are claiming they had an agreement with the Lord Partnership to buy the Armoury Building a month before the ISE bought it.

The ISE says no evidence of this was put forward and it reminded KF that the licence agreement, allowing it to occupy the premises, expired on January 31.

KF’s solicitors replied it would vacate the property as soon as practicable after it was ultimately determined that it was not beneficially entitled to it under the contract it had with the Lord Partnership.

Paraic Dunning, managing director of KF Internet Software, said in a replying affidavit that the museum is a thriving business and an important tourist facility.

His company had concluded an oral agreement with the Lord Partnership to buy the property on May 28 last.

A price of €1.5m was agreed, once the licence arrangement ran out last January, he said.

The company had invested more than €500,000 in the building, he said.

This year is very important for the museum due to the centenary of the 1916 Rising and it has entered into agreements with several organisers, along with marketing campaigns on the basis that the company would remain in occupation of the building, he said.

Moving premises would be hugely disruptive of the business and with no alternative, the business will cease in the short term, he said.