Home Q&A: All you need to know about planning permission and demolition

If you had a site with an unremarkable house overlooking a stirring view, or wanted a cinema, bar, and two swimming pools to grace your life, would it be that easy to dismiss and destroy the existing property?

What may seem unimportant to you, may pique the interest of your local planners. File picture

Movie star Saoirse Ronan and her husband Jack Lowden were frustrated in their efforts to flatten a bungalow near Ballydehob, in West Cork, recently. Looking at images of the pretty but unremarkable 125sq m stone-faced 1990s Irish dormer, this refusal might have been a surprise to many of us.

The rejection by Cork County Council’s planning board stated that the cottage was regarded by the planners as “well integrated” in the site (and it clearly is to my eye).