A date has been set for the sale of the 19th-century Kerry mansion seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau last month.
The auction of the six-bedroom Clashnacree House and 20 acres with guesthouse, stables and outside swimming pool near Sneem, Co Kerry, will be held at the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney on October 25th. The auctioneers are Cohalan Downing and Associates of Cork.
The house, which was bought for £300,000 in 1991, was seized from a convicted Dutch drugs-dealer, Jan Hendrik Ijpelaar, and has already attracted a number of inquiries.
In the High Court on September 13th, Judge Paul Butler granted Ijpelaar a stay on the sale of 10 acres of land some distance away at Greenane, but said the CAB could go ahead with the auction of Clashnacree, in which Ijpelaar had not claimed an interest.
Mr Maurice Cohalan, managing director of the auctioneering firm, yesterday described the house as "quite tired", because it has been unoccupied for some time. But he said there had already been a large number of inquiries to the Criminal Assets Bureau from Ireland and abroad following the publicity surrounding the seizure.
"The house already has had great publicity. We would be surprised if there wasn't interest at the auction," said Mr Cohalan.
Clashnacree is described as "an elegant and beautiful 19th-century house of Victorian origins . . . superbly situated in a peaceful country setting with 20 acres of pasture and woodland".
The property is expected to fetch in the region of £1,000,000. Built some time after 1845, Clashnacree is one of Kerry's great houses. It was built as a dower house for the Bland family, owners of the nearby estate on which the Parknasilla Great Southern Hotel now stands, and was the childhood home of the well-known architect, James Franklin Fuller.
Yesterday, the Sneem development co-op reiterated its call for Clashnacree to remain in the hands of the State. "It is a historic property," said Dr Patrick Malone, secretary of the co-op.