Lord seeks return of hotel paintings

Lord Inchiquin is to ask the High Court today to direct the return to him of 37 ancestral portraits that have hung in Dromoland Castle for decades before and since it became a hotel.

Barrister Frank Callanan, SC, counsel for Conor O’Brien, the 18th Baron Inchiquin, said the defendant, Dromoland Castle Holdings Ltd, had refused to return them until it had reproductions of them either painted or copied.

Jonathan Newman, counsel for the hotel owners, said that if Mr Callanan succeeded in obtaining a court order for the return of the portraits before they were copied, it would be a very serious matter from the point of view of the hotel.