DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL has declared an application by Temple Bar businessman Martin Keane to refurbish the city’s Iveagh Markets invalid.

Keane, who has controlled the site under a lease agreement since the mid 1990s, submitted an application to the local authority to redevelop the Liberties marketplace in December.

He had sought to upgrade the derelict site so it would contain a new market area, a brewery, a restaurant, an artisan deli, a bakery and two hotels.

However, the council declared his application invalid last week after it said Keane had not received a letter of consent from the owner of the site – Dublin City Council itself – for its redevelopment.

Earlier this month, the council said it planned to repossess the markets after years of stalled redevelopment.

In a report issued to councillors today, Dublin City Council Assistant Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare made it clear the council did not support Keane’s planning application. 

“The Council will defend this action in the courts if necessary,” Shakespeare said at the time.

The Business Post reported last summer that Keane said he would deploy “considerable financial resources” in any legal action over Iveagh Markets.

Keane was previously granted planning permission to redevelop the site in 2007, but that permission lapsed in 2017.

The same year, local councillors voted to take over ownership of the markets, built by the Iveagh Trust in 1890. At the time, Keane said he would “go to war” over the building. 

Last year, a council-commissioned report found that the Iveagh Markets were “unsafe and in an advanced state of dereliction” due to “serious neglect and several damaging interventions”.