THE Irish Rugby Football Union has been condemned by residents of Kingswood Heights, Clondalkin, and by conservationists for the weekend demolition of outbuildings at a historic 200 year old house.
The IRFU said at the weekend it had been forced under the terms of a dangerous buildings order from South Dublin County Council to demolish most of the out buildings at White Hall, which stands on a green belt between Tallaght and Clondalkin.
The house and adjoining 90 acre farm were purchased by the IRFU in autumn 1994 as a potential sports stadium. In May last year the IRFU sought planning permission to demolish the house and extensive outbuildings.
This was successfully opposed by local residents, community groups and historical societies.
The house was one of the centres of the Celtic Revival at the end of the last century. It was the home of Katherine Tynan who, with her sisters Alice and Nora, hosted many of the leading figures of the period. They included Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Davitt, Isaac Butt, Douglas Hyde, William and Jack Butler Yeats, George Russell and John Millington Synge.
Yesterday Mr Peter Tynan O'Mahony, the organising secretary of the Tynan Society, which wants to see the house restored as part of Ireland's heritage, accused the IRFU of attempting to have the building demolished "by stealth and neglect".
He said that over the last few months the house and outbuildings had been vandalised and that on Saturday a bulldozer moved in and demolished nearly all the out buildings.
"The IRFU told me that they had received a dangerous buildings order from the County Council to make the outbuildings safe and this could only be accomplished, they said, by demolishing them," he claimed.
He said the Dublin Civic Trust had put forward a proposal to turn the house and farm buildings into a model organic produce farm based on a similar venture in Co Leitrim. The plan envisaged the restoration of all the buildings.