A controversial apartment scheme in Dublin 4 has been given the green light by city council planners.

John Ronan Jnr, son of Treasury Holding's Johnny Ronan, and Shane Whelan have been granted approval by the council to build an apartment block on a vacant site at the corner of Appian Way and Upper Leeson Street.

The developers were seeking to build 17 apartments in a six-storey block on the prime site beside the Mitchell House apartment building, which has extensive frontage onto both Appian Way and Leeson Street.

Dublin City Council gave the go-ahead for the scheme but ruled that one of the penthouses must be turned into a roof garden and to eliminate one floor, resulting in the loss of a further three apartments.

The apartments range in size from 65sq m (699sq ft) to 149sq m (1,604sq ft) and, given their location so close to the city centre, are likely to command high prices.

The 0.23-acre site is laid out in grass and was left undeveloped at the time of the construction of the Mitchell House development in the 1960s.

A planned apartment building never materialised and the site was subsequently sold on.

Justice Frederick Morris, An Taisce and Green Party Dublin South East TD John Gormley were among the more than 50 objectors to the scheme.

Residents said the site was used as a park until it was railed off in 2004. Soon after, the 0.23-acre plot was re-zoned by the council to allow for residential development.

An Taisce, meanwhile, argued that the proposed scheme was out of character with surrounding Georgian and Victorian houses.