Fine Gael’s Marian Agrios entered into another agreement – separate from the two already reported by The Ditch – that compelled a property developer to increase a more than €100,000 package she got to withdraw a planning appeal.
The Ditch previously reported details of an agreement between Agrios and a property developer involving €103,000 worth of work to her property in exchange for the withdrawal of a planning appeal.
It has now emerged that Agrios signed a supplemental agreement months later that increased this package to €129,000.
Agrios was dropped as a Fine Gael local election candidate this week after The Ditch reported she got a €30,000 deal from a different developer to withdraw a separate planning objection.
'This deal however was changed at Agrios’s insistence just more than a year later'
Property developer Cheverdale Limited successfully applied to Louth County Council for permission to build 51 new homes on a former ghost estate site in Termonfeckin, county Louth.
Fine Gael’s Marian Agrios and her husband Demetrios, who live beside the now-completed housing estate, had lodged an objection to the development.
On 29 June, 2017 Agrios and her husband appealed the council’s decision to grant permission to An Bord Pleanála (ABP).
Within 24 hours of lodging her appeal, Agrios signed an agreement with Cheverdale, which would see her get €103,510 (plus VAT) worth of work, in the form of a luxury stone wall around her home, free of charge in exchange for withdrawing her planning appeal.
This deal however was changed at Agrios’s insistence just more than a year later.
The supplemental agreement, signed in July 2018, had Cheverdale agree to increase the value of construction work on Agrios’s premium stonework wall to €129,540 (plus VAT).
The legal document noted that the “type of stone to be used in the construction of the wall” had been agreed by the former Fine Gael candidate.
Images taken in 2010 seen by The Ditch show that Agrios’s large detached home beside the Balfeddock Manor estate in Termonfeckin was previously surrounded by a wooden post and rail fence. It now boasts an impressive limestone boundary wall.
The latest revelation means Agrios signed deals for just less than €145,000 (plus VAT) worth of construction work, as well as €15,000 cash, from two developers in return for dropping her planning objections to a now completed 83-home development.
Agrios declined to comment.
