Row over ESB’s €150m plan to modernise HQ

ESB has lodged a planning application for a €150m redevelopment of its controversial Fitzwilliam Street site, which will see the 1970s-style facade restored to a style more sympathetic to its surroundings.

Such is the strength of feeling against the current building that, earlier this year, Dublin City councillors described the decision in 1965 to rip down 16 Georgian houses to make way for the existing ESB headquarters was “an act of vandalism”.

However, when it emerged ESB wanted to replace it with a design that “respects the surrounding architectural heritage”, the family of the man who designed the current building, the late Sam Stephenson, took umbrage.