Court orders €194,000 in rent arrears to be paid to ffrench-O'Carroll estate
High Court Reporters
The High Court has declared that €194,331 should be paid in rent arrears by a receiver of the lease on a mews at the rear of a house on Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, where the ffrench-O'Carroll family lived.
Renée ffrench-O'Carroll, the wife of the late Michael ffrench-O'Carroll, a former TD, was for many years the only owner/occupier of a property on the square which is now largely a business district of the city.
A mews at the rear of the home was leased by Ms ffrench-O'Carroll to her son Arthur who turned it into a restaurant on the ground floor and apartments above.
The restaurant operated successfully for a number of years from 1989.
But by 2016, the year after Ms ffrench-O'Carroll died, the restaurant/apartments lease was taken over by a receiver who was appointed over Arthur’s assets.
The executors of the estate were her two other sons, Donal and Paul ffrench O'Carroll. In 2020, Donal called on the receiver to agree to a revised rent on the mews property.
Agreement could not be reached and in 2021 an independent valuer determined increased rents for periods since 2013 and since 2018.
The matter came before Mr Justice Oisín Quinn who was asked to determine the proper construction of a rent review clause in the lease and from what date arrears should be paid.
Last month, the judge ruled the receiver should make a payment to the ffrench O’Carroll estate that includes the arrears due from March 2014 and from July 2018, based on determinations by the independent valuer.
He adjourned the matter for the precise arrears to be calculated.
On Tuesday, he was told the sum was €194,331 and he made formal orders that a payment in that amount be made to the estate.
Ms ffrench-O'Carroll was the daughter of French diplomat Xavier de Laforcade, the 1940s equivalent to the French ambassador to Ireland, who gave her the four-storey over basement Fitzwilliam Square property as a wedding present on her marriage in 1944 to Irish doctor Michael ffrench-O'Carroll. She died in December 2015.
Michael was one of the founders of the Clann na Poblachta political party in 1947 and later, in 1951, was elected independent TD for South West Dublin in 1951. He died in 2007.
