Walkers should continue to have access through Howth Castle Estate, councillors say

Just after the sun had set on Saturday, Oleksii Raksheiev and Dmytro Smychok were walking up the long road from the historic gates of Howth Castle estate towards the Deer Park Hotel.

They were coming from Tesco, carrying orange juice and sweets. The walk to the shop is one they take regularly, says Raksheiev, as they’re living in the hotel. 

Along with about 175 other Ukrainians, according to Eoin Quinlan, the general manager of Howth Castle Estate, who’ve come to Ireland under the EU’s temporary protection directive, which unlocked access to Europe for Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion.

WSHI Unlimited Company, an affiliate of Tetrarch Capital, which owns Howth Castle Estate, applied for permission in 2023 to demolish the hotel, and build a new four-storey hotel and leisure centre. 

Fingal County Council approved that proposal, with conditions, a decision that both WSHI and Green Party Councillor David Healy appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála, which also approved it, with conditions. 

Then, at Healy’s request, leave was granted for a judicial review of that decision, and the case has now returned to the planning commission again for reconsideration.  

Throughout this saga so far, one of the main points of contention has been a new access road to the hotel. The first time around, the planning commission approved the plan with the condition that the proposed access road be omitted.

But there’s also another access issue too, says Healy, who says he supports upgrading the hotel, but wants it done right. That’s pedestrian access across the estate. 

“Howth Demesne and the Deer Park Hotel are currently accessed by foot from a number of long-standing access points,” Healy said in a June 2023 submission to the planning process.  

“The previous and new owners have maintained a public commitment to public access to the Demesne,” he wrote. “However, recent experience and correspondence from the new owners with regards to fences and gates have created confusion and considerable concern.” 

Howth Castle Estate is very open and will remain so, says Quinlan, the general manager. But the owners also need to keep it safe, and discourage illegal dumping, parties, fires, and other problems – so some fencing has been added, he said.

Maintaining access

To many locals, the estate has long felt open, says Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins, a long-time resident.

People always cut across it: to get across Howth since the estate is massive; or to walk to Aideen’s Grave, a megalithic tomb thought to date back to about 2,500 BCE.

It’s on the National Monument’s Service’s Record of Monuments and Places, and so it’s protected.

“We need a legal framework where people have access to that,” Hopkins says. “It’s far too much to leave it to the whims of a private developer.”

Tour operator Shane O’Doherty, who runs Howth Adventures, says he was born in the 1960s and when he was a child, he remembers cutting across the estate, and all his neighbours doing the same. He wants to see that maintained.

Healy, the Green Party councillor, in his 2023 planning submission, pointed to a network of long‑established routes across the estate, linking the hotel to Howth village, Grace O’Malley Road, Offington, Old Castle Avenue, and Aideen’s Grave.

During its first trip to the planning commission on appeal, the commission’s inspector noted this concern, but didn’t engage with it, something Healy criticised.

The Fingal Development Plan strongly promotes permeability, encouraging walking and cycling routes in both new developments and existing areas.

That’s something Healy argues, that should apply to the hotel redevelopment just as it would to a housing scheme or office block.

Private property

“People might feel they have a right of way” through Howth Castle Estate, says Quinlan, the general manager, “but a right of way in Irish law means a legal right to walk over someone else’s land. And there are no legal rights of way on this estate.”

That does not mean the public is unwelcome, he said. The main gates are left open 24/7, he says.   

The routes are signposted, and access to Aideen’s Grave and woodland walks remain available, he said.

Additional fencing and controls have been introduced for safety and environmental reasons, not to exclude the public, Quinlan says.

He described a Halloween night incident in which 50 to 80 teenagers organised an unauthorised rave on the estate, lighting fires in woodland areas and spraypainting historic walls.

“That’s always my fear. Fires in the woodland,” he said.

He said tractors have been stolen, benches vandalised, and large-scale illegal dumping has occurred, requiring industrial skips to remove dumped waste. 

Housing fears, and rezoning

Concerns about access are entangled with longer‑running fears about housing development on the estate.

The estate’s owners have on and off lobbied Fingal County Council to rezone parts of the Howth Castle demesne for housing, including proposals for senior living and affordable homes.

Those proposals were not adopted in the current Fingal Development Plan, and the lands remain zoned High Amenity within the buffer zone of the Howth Special Amenity Area Order.

Quinlan, the estate’s general manager, said that an earlier master plan that included housing “didn’t get very far” and has effectively been scrapped.

“We commissioned a 400‑plus‑page conservation management plan,” he said. Which he said, covers the ecology, protected views, heritage, and wildlife of the entire estate. “That’s now been submitted to Fingal County Council, and we’re waiting on feedback.”

Only then, he said, would a new master plan be drawn up – one focused on the hotel, golf course, and castle, not housing.

“This will be a very long-term view of the estate,” Quinlan said. “We’re not looking to concrete over 470 acres.”

Still, some of the submissions to the current planning process to redevelop the Deer Park Hotel reflect a suspicion that the access road, as WSHI originally proposed it, was not just for access to the hotel – but was actually designed with an eye to larger-scale development in the future.

Trust

On the issue of continued pedestrian access along long-established routes across the estate, Hopkins, the Social Democrats councillor, said she does not trust that assurances alone are enough.

“We’ve seen elsewhere that public access promised through planning conditions can disappear,” she said, pointing to other heritage sites. “That’s why this has to be nailed down.”

In deciding the appeal now back before it, An Coimisiún Pleanála could impose conditions relating to pedestrian access. Its decision on the appeal is expected in January 2026. 

For now, walkers continue to pass through the gates, following signposted paths toward the hotel, the woods, and the ancient grave on the hill.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.