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The owner of a house that was allegedly the subject of complaints by residents due to its state of preservation and neglected garden has filed a challenge with the High Court of the movements of the city council to acquire the property.
Peter Paul Keenan owns the home in Grange, John’s Hill, Waterford, which the City and County of Waterford placed a Mandatory Purchase Order (CPO) in place over a year ago.
Mr. Keenan, who says he has lived at Abbey Field, Clonard, Co Meath, for the past 16 years, says he knew nothing about the CPO until September of this year.
He discovered that the council had been sending CPO notices to a former address of his in Waterford and to another in Dublin. The notices were returned to the council as undelivered, it says in an affidavit.
Mr. Keenan says he last rented the property in 2015, but the tenants terminated the lease due to complaints from a neighbor who did not agree.
He now plans to do some work on the property so his daughters can live there when they attend Waterford Institute of Technology.
He says he was astonished to discover that the locks had been changed on September 27.
The city council told him that the CPO had been started due to complaints from the neighborhood association. He says there is no residents’ association and believes the complaints are coming from a particular resident.
He says he is distraught at the idea that the city council could acquire his property without notifying him. He never intended to sell it, he says. The CPO is wildly disproportionate and fundamentally unfair, he says.
On Monday, Stephen Dodd BL, in place of Mr. Keenan, received permission from Mr. Judge Charles Meenan to initiate a judicial review proceeding that seeks to overturn the CPO’s decision. The request was represented by only one side.
The judge also granted a stay in the CPO proceeding pending further determination, but gave the council the freedom to vary or remove the stay with a seven-day notice to Keenan’s side.
The case will go back to court in January.
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