Planning appeal claims McGregor's sprawling mansion 'not an ambitious proposal'

Kenneth Fox

Plans by MMA fighter Conor McGregor to construct a sprawling mansion in Co Kildare complete with two pools, a cinema and a bar “is not an ambitious proposal,” his architect has claimed.

Jason Tyler told the appeals board that the new house plan is not an ambitious proposal in the context of a previous planning permission granted to McGregor for the site and a previous 2017 permission for an additional house within the landholding.

In 2021, McGregor received the green light for a large house extension for his Paddocks home at Castledillon near Straffan in Co Kildare.

However, McGregor never proceeded with the plan as Tyler Owens Architects previously told Kildare County Council that having started the process of demolition back in 2022, it became apparent that the existing quality of construction of the remainder of the house, along with Mr McGregor’s changing needs, indicated that the works would not make sense.

This resulted in McGregor seeking planning permission last year to demolish his existing five-bedroom Paddocks home and replace it with 32,693sq ft six-bedroom ‘family home’ – which is 27 times the floor size of an average 1,200sq ft semi-detached home.

In the appeal against the council’s refusal of planning permission, Jason Tyler of Tyler Owens Architects told the appeals board that McGregor “is looking to build a modern energy efficient building compliant two-storey family home with better materials in the same location as to what he currently has planning for”.

He said: “Replacing one existing house on the site with one new house on the site, with a similar footprint and in the same location on the site does not seem in our opinion to be that detrimental that a refusal of permission is warranted.”

In January, the council issued its refusal after McGregor refused to reduce the scale of his planned home.

Council planners rejected the planned McGregor ‘family home’ after concluding that the scheme was 'excessive' and 'visually incongruous’.

Now in the appeal, Mr Tyler said: “We do not believe that replacing one domestic two-storey house with a new domestic two-storey house in the same location with a negligible increase in elevation and height but with better material finishes should have been refused planning permission.”

Mr Tyler said this was especially the case given that the 2017 planning permission for the additional home on the site that would have been closer to the River Liffey and increased the overall building footprint to 1,041sq m compared to the currently refused footprint of 977sq m.

The 2017 planning permission never proceeded and it expired in 2022.

Comparing the current proposals to the 2017 permission, Mr Tyler said that “we are confused as to how this house would not have been deemed injurious to the amenity character of the site, yet our current refusal was deemed injurious to the amenity character”.

McGregor paid out €3 million for The Paddocks in 2019 and planning documentation shows that McGregor’s staff were to be housed in a nearby home at No 5 Castledillon “which is now also in the full ownership of the applicant”.

Records with the Residential Property Price show that No 5 Castledillon was purchased for €1.65 million in June 2022.

The purchase of the neighbouring No 5 Castledillon increased McGregor’s landholding from 5.8 acres to 10 acres.

An Bord Pleanála is due to decide on the McGregor planning appeal at the end of June.

In November in the High Court, a jury found against McGregor in a civil rape case taken by Nikita Hand.

The Dublin woman was awarded nearly €250,000 in damages after the jury found that she was raped by McGregor in the Dublin hotel in December 2018. McGregor also faces paying the bulk of the legal costs estimated at more than €1 million associated with the case.