It’s hard to imagine a better monument to the hubris of the Celtic Tiger era than the sprawling, 588sq m house built by Chris and Rose Murray at Faughan Hill, Bohermeen in Co Meath. The five-bedroom detached home – with its double carport, impressive 9 metre roof height and Juliet balcony – seemed to have been transplanted from Northern California to its site 7km north of Navan. It did not, to adopt the language of the many, many planning inspectors’ reports on the issue, “reflect the vernacular style of the area”.

But it’s not just on the grounds of aesthetics or ambition that the house feels like a relic of the buccaneering spirit of the Ireland of 20 years ago: a time when an enormous kitchen island topped Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and taxi drivers were experts in the vicissitudes of the Bulgarian property market.

In June 2006, the Murrays were refused planning permission to build a 283 sq m dormer bungalow with a garage on the site. So – presumably adopting the “you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb” mindset that characterised Ireland’s banking and building culture at the time – they built something twice as big.

“Twenty years ago we said it is a mistake,” Rose Murray acknowledged this week. “And we’ve been trying to make it right since.”

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To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, crises of this nature usually happen slowly and then all at once. But in the case of the Murrays, events moved fast, and then barely at all until this week. Just before Christmas 2007 – presumably already installed in their spacious new residence – they were turned down for retention permission, due to concerns about wastewater treatment and housing density.

And so began a protracted legal battle of incalculable psychological and apparently unknown financial cost – Murray told Claire Byrne on Newstalk this week she has no idea how much it has all cost. Millions, Byrne wondered. Murray didn’t know.

That battle has included five failed bids for retention permission and unsuccessful court proceedings, with two challenges still live before the European courts.

The 20-year standoff moved into its final, depressing phase on Thursday, as up to 10 vans belonging to a security company rolled up the driveway, watched by gardaí, Meath County Council and some neighbours. At about 11am, the Murrays finally lost ownership of their home, and demolition began a couple of hours later.

It was hard not to feel sympathy for Rose Murray as she described the impact on the family – although she made the task a little easier when she was asked if her children would be moving into a B&B: “The children are not going to go to the B&B with all the homeless people and refugees.”

[ How a dream family home in Co Meath became a 20-year nightmareOpens in new window ]

But whatever your feelings towards the couple, the case poses interesting questions of moral hazard. Do the Murrays have a right to feel aggrieved?

On the one hand, everyone knows you haven’t up to now been able to build a shelter for your wheelie bins without planning permission. They built a whole house.

On the other, the notion that you’re better off asking for forgiveness than permission has long been one of the unspoken principles of the Irish property market.

There is no nationally collated data on planning permission retention applications. But an investigation in the Irish Independent in 2024 suggested that 11,000 people have sought retention since 2019 and most are given it. Of the nearly 1,300 retention applications made to Dublin City Council, fewer than 200 were refused. The pattern was similar all over the country. It’s safe to assume that few pertained to entire houses, but the expectation that you can flout the planning laws and get away with it is well established.

A larger point is that, in terms of the abuses committed at the altar of bricks and mortar during the Celtic Tiger era – the sprawling ghost estates, of which 60 are still standing; the reckless lending; the 100 per cent mortgages; the potentially lethal finish on apartment blocks; the houses built with mica and pyrite; the unsafe school buildings; the private gambles that were magically transformed into public debt when they went wrong – a single family home in Meath barely reckons. As satisfying as it might have been to see some of the main culprits of that era made to stand on their driveway on a bright spring day and watch as a wrecking ball was taken to their lives, that didn’t happen.

[ ‘If I had it all to do again, I’d just move into a caravan,’ says owner of Meath house being demolishedOpens in new window ]

A better question, perhaps, is whether the rest of us have a right to feel aggrieved. The news of the planned demolition came on the same day as the latest eviction statistics were released. In the final three months of 2025, evictions were up 41 per cent. Where are those families and individuals going to go? Last month, the number of homeless people in the State topped 17,000 – yet another shameful record smashed. The Murrays suggested their house could be given to charity – an offer that was not taken up. The real crime is that the deadlock over this spacious and evidently well-maintained family home had to be resolved with a wrecking ball.

Seeing footage of the house readied for demolition, it reminded me less of the ranch homes of Northern California than of the follies built by the Protestant ascendancy class in the 18th century here, monuments to their wealth, but paid for by peasants.

The demolition began in earnest on Friday, but it should be stopped, before the house is completely razed to the ground. And the ruins left to stand, as a monument to an era of hubris and greed we are still paying for.

© The Irish Times