Padel court developer says his family has successfully squatted land along Grand Canal in Inchicore

There’s land along a path on the northside of the Grand Canal near Blackhorse Bridge in Inchicore where Michael Kelly wants to build two padel courts, with a café, toilets, and bike parking. 

Only, Waterways Ireland now says it owns some of that patch. And it hasn’t given permission, it says.

Not so, say Kelly and his father Thomas Kelly. 

Thomas Kelly, in an affidavit filed as part of the planning application, says he has squatted it for more than 30 years, giving him a right to “adverse possession” – or squatters’ rights.

Michael Kelly said in an email earlier this week that the facility would be positive for the area, using an empty site that has served no purpose, right near the Blackhorse Luas stop.

Nobody aside from Waterways Ireland has objected to the application, he said, and he is still hoping for a positive decision from the council. 

“A place that promotes health and wellbeing is a place that will last long and serve a positive purpose for a high density city centre location,” said Kelly.

Empty buildings on streets around the Blackhorse Luas stop are also subject to plans for redevelopment, some plans older than others.

Further towards Blackhorse Bridge, An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission in June 2021 to Alanna Homes for a complex of about 50 apartments on the site of the boarded-up Black Horse Inn. Construction hasn’t started yet on those, though.

And down past a row of shops northwards along Tyrconnell Road, Dublin City Council granted planning permission at the end of last month to turn an old warehouse into a big sports facility and gym.

Along the canal

The land where Michael Kelly wants to build the padel courts and all sits to the east of the old Blackhorse Inn, behind a fence hugged with hedge bindweed and blackberry brambles. 

Kelly filed for planning permission to build on the spot last year, and has been going back and forward with planners, responding to requests for further information about the project. 

Those included a request from council planners for further information about the design, which had high and curved rusty-red roofs on top of the courts. The scale of those would likely have too great an impact on the wider area, they said.

So Kelly dropped the roofs, the response says. 

The biggest question, though, was that of ownership. In December 2024, Waterways Ireland wrote in its observation that it owns and controls a strip of land – that had been included in the planning application – between Kelly’s site and Goldenbridge Walk, a roadway that runs along the canal.

That strip of land had been passed between different state and semi-state agencies down the years, until it was vested in Waterways Ireland, it says. Waterways Ireland hasn’t given permission for the application, the letter says.

In response, Kelly filed an affidavit from his father, and a legal opinion from a barrister. 

Thomas Kelly used to own and run the Black Horse Inn. And Blackhorse Inn Limited, of which Thomas Kelly was a director, bought some of the lands along the canal in 1987, says his affidavit, signed in November 2022. 

One part of a touching plot was unfenced, it says, “and I deliberately squatted on this area with the intention of acquiring the property”. 

He has used the land for storage for kegs, skips and refuse bags, uninterrupted since 1988, he said. He also maintained the boundary around the plot, he wrote.

The Planning and Development Act 2000 doesn’t say that somebody has to have an interest in land, or the owner’s consent, to apply for planning permission, says the barrister’s letter. 

Regulations do say that an application has to include, where the applicant is not the owner, a letter of consent, he says. 

But he cites a past case, where the High Court found that the requirement for that letter was to prevent frivolous or vexatious applications. 

Given this clearly wasn’t a frivolous or vexatious application, he said, the council could decide the planning application without weighing in on the issue of land ownership.