Desmond vs Dunne: The battle of Ballsbridge

In what is being viewed by property-market sources as an attempt to avoid a huge write-down in the site's value, the developer re-applied for permission last September to construct 12 buildings on the site.

This time the plans include 10 retail units, medical facilities, a crèche, five restaurants or bars, and a 135-bedroom seven-storey hotel looking out onto Pembroke Road. The tallest building in the new scheme is 15 storeys. If approved, Dunne said €300m would be spent on construction.

When Dunne unveiled the revised plan, he said objections identified by An Bord Pleanala when refusing the initial scheme had been fully addressed. Desmond does not agree. "The design is bland, uninteresting, typical of many nondescript and uninteresting buildings that lie unused and unlikely to be used throughout the city of Dublin in the foreseeable future," Desmond argued in a four-page letter of objection to Dublin city council.

"It is hardly likely any person will visit Dublin and seek to visit a development of the type proposed in this application the way they visit developments in Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and other cities which emphasise the importance of design, and marvel at what has been created. It is entirely unacceptable that a mechanical and rigid approach of squares and rectangles be the design solution."

Desmond told the council he does not care that Dunne's revised development has been scaled down because he is still not happy with its design. He also objected to plans for uses other than accommodation because the site is only zoned for residential use in the city's development plan.

Dunne's wife, Gayle Killilea, received a warning letter from the city council in September saying that the D4 Stores convenience shop she opened on the grounds of Jury's hotel did not fall within the planning permission for the site, and that enforcement proceedings could follow.

Killilea, who believed the store would be a success among Ballsbridge residents who had been "wiped out financially", described the council's response as the "histrionics" of "self-serving" politicians.

Desmond, who recently welcomed Andrea Corr into his family after her marriage to his son Brett, told the council that it "cannot and must not seek to interpret the [development] plan in a way other than in the form in which it is being adopted". Desmond also expressed concern that the planning authorities would proceed to deal with applications like Dunne's in the absence of an appropriate context, such as a strategic plan for the area. Dunne's application, he concluded, was "premature" without a local area plan to deal with his site.

After snapping up Jury's hotels in 2005, Dunne rebranded them as D4 Hotels, offered discount prices as low as €20 a night midweek, and hosted a party in one of them for Muhammad Ali when the former world heavyweight boxing champion visited Ireland in September. The developer said about a year ago that he could be considered "insolvent" due to the banking crisis.

Dunne's attempts to extract value from other properties he purchased in south Dublin during the boom have also been hampered by the objections of local residents. His plans for a new office development at the AIB Bankcentre in Ballsbridge, for which he paid €207m in 2006, met with a cross-party rejection from Dublin city councillors last month. They recommended that the city planners refuse his application to demolish the site's four low-rise late-1970s office blocks and replace them with six new office blocks ranging in height from seven to nine storeys.

The design was described as "completely inappropriate in this historic setting which the council should be preserving".