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DUBLIN (AP) -- A Northern Ireland filmmaker has won euro46,000 ($69,000) in damages after a judge ruled that his Irish island home was transformed into a parking lot while he was overseas for six years.
The case of 61-year-old Neville Presho captured national attention because of the apparent callousness of his treatment at the hands of the insular 170-strong community of remote Tory Island. Police investigating the vanished house found only a wall of silence.
Presho successfully sued developer and hotelier Patrick Doohan after he returned from New Zealand to find no trace of his six-bedroom property beside the island's harbor. In its place stood a septic tank and parking lot for Doohan's newly built 12-room hotel, which remains the only one today on Tory.
Presho said Tuesday that his mid-19th century stone-built home had become "a car park surrounded by boulders to prevent inebriated drivers from driving into the harbor."
Presho never achieved fame as a filmmaker - but produced, directed and co-wrote one that uncannily foreshadowed his own experience. His 1981 film "Desecration" told the story of an amateur archaeologist on an Irish island who toils to preserve its medieval castle, but his restoration work is destroyed by other islanders determined to develop a mine there instead.
But Presho said he doesn't expect to live there again. Even if he does receive his court-ordered euro46,000, that's less than a fifth of the average house price in Ireland.
"You could build a really nice chicken coop with that sort of money," he quipped, "but you'd have no money left over to buy the chickens."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...OUSE?SITE=PAPOE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
The case of 61-year-old Neville Presho captured national attention because of the apparent callousness of his treatment at the hands of the insular 170-strong community of remote Tory Island. Police investigating the vanished house found only a wall of silence.
Presho successfully sued developer and hotelier Patrick Doohan after he returned from New Zealand to find no trace of his six-bedroom property beside the island's harbor. In its place stood a septic tank and parking lot for Doohan's newly built 12-room hotel, which remains the only one today on Tory.
Presho said Tuesday that his mid-19th century stone-built home had become "a car park surrounded by boulders to prevent inebriated drivers from driving into the harbor."
Presho never achieved fame as a filmmaker - but produced, directed and co-wrote one that uncannily foreshadowed his own experience. His 1981 film "Desecration" told the story of an amateur archaeologist on an Irish island who toils to preserve its medieval castle, but his restoration work is destroyed by other islanders determined to develop a mine there instead.
But Presho said he doesn't expect to live there again. Even if he does receive his court-ordered euro46,000, that's less than a fifth of the average house price in Ireland.
"You could build a really nice chicken coop with that sort of money," he quipped, "but you'd have no money left over to buy the chickens."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...OUSE?SITE=PAPOE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
