Vacancy Watch: Dublin City Council plans to turn historic building at Parnell Square into apartments

In the run-up to the 1916 Rising, police were closely watching the four-storey red-brick Georgian building at 41 Parnell Square West, says historian Liz Gillis.

It was the headquarters of the Coillteoirí Náisiúnta na hÉireann, the Irish National Foresters Benefit Society – and used as a meeting place by revolutionary leaders.

The Gaelic League, the GAA and Cumann na mBán also used a theatre in a hall, built in 1912, at the back of the building – which was demolished in 2020.

These days, the historic mid-terrace building is vacant and disused – but not on the derelict sites register. 

Dublin City Council has owned the building since 1998, according to property records. That’s been in dispute for decades, although a High Court judgement on the matter in April of this year may finally have settled it.

At Monday’s monthly council meeting, Sinn Féin Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha picked up on a line on a report that mentioned the building – and welcomed it. It said the council now plans to renovate it. 

Dublin City Council hopes to turn it into cost-rental apartments for keyworkers, said Mac Donncha by phone on Thursday. 

Mac Donncha is researching the history of one of the buildings nearby – 44 Parnell Square West, now home to Sinn Féin’s headquarters. 

Number 41 comes up a lot in his archival research, he says. “It was used for a lot of meetings in the revolutionary period, up to 1923.” 

Gillis, the historian, says 41 Parnell Square West was used by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which encouraged the Foresters Benefit Society to build a hall out the back. 

That hall included a theatre space and so became a hub for the cultural revival, she says, as well as revolutionary organisations. At one point, it was used as a Sinn Féin Court, she says. 

“It's a hugely significant building that is lying derelict,” says Gillis. “It really has that connection to that cultural and political revival and revolutionary movement.”

A revolutionary meeting space

Gillis says the members of the Foresters Benefit Society paid a weekly subscription. If one got sick and couldn’t work, they got a payment and their medical bills were covered. There was a funeral grant too, she says. 

The Irish foresters broke off from the British organisation because they were nationalists, she says. “They were interested in politics and supported Irish nationalism.”

“They were a very popular organisation,” she says.

The hall at the back of the building was designed by William Alphonsus Scott, a leading architect in Ireland at the time, she says, and was built in two years. 

Many of the buildings on Parnell Square were used by the revolutionary organisations. “41 is part of that history”, she says. 

The foresters’ hall was special because it provided extra space, and was a hub of cultural activity, concerts, ceilis and craic. 

The IRB ran drill practice in the hall. Na Fíanna, the equivalent of the Boy Scouts, trained in the hall, says Gillis. So some of the revolutionary leaders would have been in there as children, too, she says. 

“The hall is crucial because it provides the space where the revolutionaries could meet,” says Gillis. “The cultural revival, it's all connected.”

After 1916 and during the war of independence, when the Irish nationalists established an alternative government and court system, the building was used for the Sinn Féin courts, she says. 

What now?

Mac Donncha, says he used to work at the Sinn Féin headquarters in the 1990s. He always remembers 41 being disused, he says. 

“As far as I remember, what happened is the hall, which was out the back, a bit like the Teacher’s Club, that ended up being demolished, because it was gone to rack and ruin,” he says. 

A report to the full council monthly meeting on 3 November says that the council is using money from the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund to finance buying and doing up the building. 

“41 Parnell Square; acquisition and refurbishment of a protected structure,” says the report. 

MacDonncha says that following inquiries with council officials, he understands that the council compulsarily purchased the building because it was derelict. 

It has spent a lot of money to fix the roof, he says,and now hopes to renovate it for cost-rental housing for essential workers. “We want to build key worker accommodation.” 

Ownership dispute

John Lynskey and John Bermingham “jointly acquired a 999-year lease of the Property in or around 22 December 1983”, according to the 29 April 2025 High Court judgement. 

“At that time, it was in use as a dance hall, although that use ceased by the mid-1980s,” it says. 

It fell into disrepair and the council put it on the derelict sites register in 1996, and CPO-ed it in 1998, the judgement says. “DCC accordingly became the registered legal owner of the Property,” it says. 

However, Lynskey and Bermingham challenged this in court, the judgement says, and a settlement was reached in 2003. They’d pay the council €75,000 and complete “certain works” on the property, “following which legal title to the Property would be transferred back to them”, it says.

The payment was made, the judgement says. Dublin City Council planning records show that Lynskey and Bermingham applied for permission in 2004 to turn it into a hotel and restaurant, but then quickly withdrew that application.

The works required under the 2003 court settlement were certified as complete in 2008, but the title transfer never quite happened, the judgement says. 

The council kept trying to send Lynskey the documents, but “he stated in his oral evidence that, as early as 2010, but certainly by 2014, he did not wish to take transfer of title to the Property owing to its deteriorated condition, or at least not without unspecified ‘changes’”, it says. 

The council spent what it calculates as €952,406 on remedial and maintenance works since 2008, the judgement says. In 2016, it took Lynskey and Bermingham to court to put an end to the 2003 settlement, and just retain ownership of the building.

In April, Ms Justice Nessa Cahill ruled that the council was no longer obliged to transfer the legal title to Lynskey, and could keep it, but should repay the €75,000.