A Dublin-based senior counsel intends to convert the city’s most flamboyant corporate headquarters into a private residence after buying it for about €3.5 million.
The redbrick Georgian house at 64 Fitzwilliam Square was for many years the business headquarters and part-time residence of Northern Ireland's wealthiest businessman, Edward Haughey, who was killed in a helicopter crash in Norfolk in 2014.
Dublin estate agents McNally Handy, which handled the sale of the Dublin house, said it was precluded from naming the purchaser.
The Dublin mansion has what might well be the most exotic fit-out of any house in the city – ornate plasterwork, colourful murals, marble pillars and fireplaces and a mass of gold leaf decorations.
It has an overall floor area of 574sq m (7,255sq ft), including two interlinking formal reception rooms at ground level and again on the first floor. Both levels have colourful, light-filled rooms embellished by decorative murals from the 1820s and marble pillars and fireplaces.
Family room
The second floor has a private living room to the front and a kitchen to the rear, while the third floor has three bedrooms and a family room. The lower ground floor is fitted out as a self-contained one-bedroom apartment. A four-person lift services all floors.
Haughey, who was also known as Lord Ballyedmond, was the founder of Norbrook Laboratories and owned castles in Northern Ireland and England as well as an elegant home in central London. His estate in Northern Ireland has been valued at €468 million.
Haughey was appointed to the Seanad by then taoiseach Albert Reynolds in 1994 and reappointed by Bertie Ahern.
