A Future for Irish Historic Houses - Irish Heritage Trust

- The gardens are another outstanding feature. They are recognised
internationally as important botanical and horticultural resources.
- The park also contains what was once the largest telescope in the world, as
well as possibly the earliest example of a wrought iron suspension bridge
in the world, a turbine house where electricity was generated as early as
1879 and reputedly the world’s earliest surviving photographic darkroom.
While the castle is internally in good condition, its owners do claim that much
remains to be done to the fabric:
- There are serious ongoing problems with damp, particularly on the top
storey, as a result of a leaking roof.
- There is a consequential problem with collapsing interior plasterwork.
- The workshop tower and the whole of the east wall require urgent
attention.
The present owner contends that of much greater import is the fact that the whole
future of the castle is threatened by the capital gains tax implications of the legal
structure in which it has been placed. Like many properties in the past, Birr was
placed in a company with sufficient supporting assets to maintain the property and,
arguably, as a means of avoiding taxation. The shares of the company were placed in
a discretionary trust to facilitate the succession of generations.
The continued existence of Birr is now, it is argued, dependent upon the life of Lord
Rosse, whose death will trigger a discretionary trust tax liability of several million
euro in the fist year, and several hundred thousand in each year following (at 6 per
cent initially and 1 per cent annually thereafter on the total value of the gross estate.)
To reconstruct now would be enormously expensive and any reconstruction would
almost certainly be at the expense of assets, which, in turn, only leads to the continued
decline of the historic and cultural worth of the property. Possibly the only means of
safeguarding Birr at this stage would be to grant it some form of exemption from the
above discretionary trust tax liability of to provide the trust with charitable status.
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