OPW faces penalty if it breaks lease on key Garda building in Dublin

Garda Headquarters, Harcourt Street, Dublin.

The Office of Public Works has conceded that should it fail to vacate a key Garda building by a pre-agreed date, its landlord will have the power to pursue it for significant compensation in the courts.

The Garda command and control centre on Harcourt Square in south Dublin city is currently under lease until 2022, while a separate facility is under construction on Military Road in nearby Kilmainham.

While the OPW has repeatedly discussed the potential for a substantial penalty payment falling due to its landlord, Hibernia Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), it claimed both at the start of December to the Irish Examiner[/url], and later to the Public Accounts Committee, that “the lease held by the Commissioners of Public Works in respect of the Harcourt Square premises does not contain a penalty clause and, therefore, the issue does not arise”.

When asked to clarify this statement’s apparent contradiction of the body’s own previous statements, the OPW said it had a “normal landlord/tenant relationship with the owners of Harcourt Square through which all commercial matters are handled”.

When asked further to clarify the nature of the penalty previously discussed if no such censure exists within the lease, a spokesperson said: “Previous comments made in this regard refer to the fact that if the Harcourt Square complex is not vacated by the expiry date, it would be open to the landlord to pursue whatever remedies are available in law”.

Questioning as to how large those remedies might prove to be have not been responded to.

The OPW has said its construction works at Military Road are on schedule to be completed by the end of 2022.

That project is currently slated to be completed for €86m, some €6m over the initial €80m estimate.

The lease on the Harcourt Square building, which currently houses specialist Garda units along with the Criminal Assets Bureau, was extended for five years in 2016 at a cost of €6m per year.

In January, OPW Commissioner Maurice Buckley told Garda Commissioner Drew Harris of the “huge financial implications” should An Garda Síochána not have vacated Harcourt Square before the end of 2022.