The man responsible for stalling Donald Trump’s ballroom plans at his Doonbeg hotel has previously challenged Conor McGregor to a bare-knuckle fight.
The mock challenge is contained in a planning submission made by serial objector and architect, Longford native Liam Madden, who opposed McGregor’s plans for a boutique hotel overlooking Howth Harbour in north Dublin.
However, bosses at Fingal County Council substantially redacted Mr Madden’s 2024 objection, without any legal basis, before making it publicly available this week in planning files.
This unexplained censorship was reversed only after the Mail on Sunday challenged its legal basis.
Mr Madden’s heretofore censored objection is typically tongue-in-cheek.
It is structured into ten individually headed paragraphs – one for each round of a boxing match – in which valid legal points are made. Then it concludes with a typical flourish.
‘I am advised by one of my clients that there’s probably only one way to sort this out. A bare knuckle fight between this writer and McGregor at the National Arena!’ Mr Madden’s submission reads.
‘The writer – known as the Longford Slasher – has a heart of oak, nerves of steel, and speaks Irish in his sleep….unlike a certain well-known Dublin Nambi-Pambi,’ Mr Madden continues.
Liam Madden messing around at the back of the Longford Arms Hotel
Dee Devlin and her husband Conor McGregor, who Mr Madden challenged to a fist fight
‘I draw the reader’s attention to the attached photo of the Natterjack Toad from Co. Kerry,’ Mr Madden then adds. ‘The reader’s special attention is drawn to the big Yellow Streak down the middle of its back.’
A suggested poster for the bout reads; ‘THE LONGFORD SLASHER versus NATTERJACK McGREGOR’ before Mr Madden signs off with the slogan ‘SEMPER BUFO!’
Semper Bufo – meaning always a toad – is the motto on the flag flying at toad hall in the book, Wind in the Willows.
Despite his often humorous approach, Mr Madden’s by-now infamous planning objections are frequently successful.
They have blocked many multi-million euro developments across the country, frequently on unique and unpredictable grounds.
Trump’s Doonbeg ballroom, for example, was stopped in its tracks, in part, by Mr Madden’s concerns for Vertigo Angustior snails at the site.
Because of his ongoing battle with Trump, Mr Madden told the Mail this week he had no time for interviews.
He said: ‘I’m up to me eyes dealing with a planning matter down in Co. Clare at the moment.
‘It’s the best one, I suspect, I’ve ever done… I already know what it’s going to win on. I could be wrong but I don’t think so.’
It is not always clear what Mr Madden’s real motivation is – aside from representing clients – and how much his love of notoriety feeds his many campaigns.
He told the MoS: ‘Telling a joke – or a bit of sarcasm – in a planning matter actually works, provided you have a good planning argument. Then they listen to you and it lightens matters. There’s only one thing worse than being talked about. That’s not being talked about.’
Now aged 75, Liam Madden was born in 1951 to Comdt. William Madden and his wife Eileen (nee Donohoe).
Comdt Madden, a prominent rugby star who played for Munster, served with the UN, both in the Congo (1963) and in Cyprus (1965).
After this military career Comdt. Madden ran a pub in Longford’s Ballymahon Street.
And in 1975 he successfully defended a case in which ‘pub spies’ working as undercover inspectors for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce accused him and other publicans of charging excessive prices for whiskey.
The case fell because of technical points argued by the defence and was perhaps an early lesson in litigation for a then 24-year-old Liam.
The following year, in 1976, Liam Madden’s then girlfriend (now wife) Carmel Breaden demonstrated just as much chutzpah as her future husband when she demanded membership of Longford’s men-only snooker club.
Both Carmel and Liam featured prominently in an RTÉ TV Newsround report on the standoff, entitled ‘Women Need Not Apply’.
Carmel, the daughter of former Councillor Tommy Breaden, is also a sister of former PD TD, Mae Sexton.
The Vertigo Angustior snail lies at the heart of Mr Madden’s concerns for Trump’s golf club
Mr Madden and his wife, a child psychologist, initially lived in Belfast and Enniskillen before returning to Longford in the early 1980s.
Despite being shortsighted, Mr Madden was a prominent goalkeeper who once captained the county GAA team.
He also won an All Ireland Club medal with UCD, played for the Longford Slashers, Clonguish and Enniskillen Gaels in the North.
In soccer, he played for Longford Town FC, Tullamore and Cliftonville FC in the North. In 1981 he travelled to Moscow, armed with a phrase book, and appeared at the Ministry of Health to ask to be seen by Dr Svyatoslav N Fyodorov – a renowned eye surgeon.
‘They were extremely friendly and put me to the top of the queue for three days of eye tests and all for nothing,’ he later told the Longford Leader.
The Russian assessment later led to a pioneering operation in Belfast that restored his full eyesight.
Anyone monitoring Mr Madden’s trajectory through life since would be forgiven for thinking the surgeon fitted him with blinkers.
His dogged and confrontational approach to disputes, of which there have been many, is renowned.
Few men can claim to have been set alight, kidnapped, imprisoned, driven at by a car intent on inflicting injury and banned from their local town council meetings.
Yet all of this has happened to him. This streak of bad luck began as Mr Madden and his wife purchased a town centre property in Longford to renovate as their lifelong home in 1982.
The purchase, from a neighbouring doctor and dentist, turned sour and ultimately wound up in court because ownership of a shed was disputed. The court heard Mr Madden accuse agents of his neighbours of aggressively breaking into his property as his family were enjoying a ‘candlelit breakfast.’
In turn, Mr Madden was accused of trying to ‘screw the last inch of land’ out of the vendors – a claim he denied.
The case was ultimately settled. Later, in the late 1980s, as the local VEC architect, Mr Madden had the misfortune of being caught up in a controversial and bitter dispute over the delayed construction of a VEC-funded gym in Ballymahon.
The stand-off saw the initial design team – including Mr Madden – replaced by a new team
This row, between a builder and the VEC, was later set aside via a settlement negotiated in 1991.
Mr Madden was once again in court in 1993 after he alleged that a young man from Rooskey, who was charged with alleged dangerous driving, had deliberately tried to run him over.
Mr Madden told the court the alleged attacker had a personal motive since his parents were embroiled in an unrelated court case against him.
‘The car sped up and drove directly at me,’ he testified. ‘I leaped out of the way and received scratches and bruises… I could have been lying in a pool of blood on the road.’
The case was ultimately dismissed by the judge, partly because of contradictions between Mr Madden’s original garda statement – which spoke of screeching of brakes – and his evidence to the court in which he testified there had been no screeching of brakes.
‘I cannot, on the evidence, under any circumstances convict the defendant,’ the judge ruled. ‘Did this car go around the corner on two wheels?’ the judge remarked.
‘I cannot accept that there was speed involved,’ he said before he dismissed the charges.
In 1996, Madden’s architecture company, Vitruvius Hibernicus Ltd, was incorporated with his wife as joint owner. The firm was dissolved in 2016.
During its operation the company reported various – but modest – losses and profits and paid the Maddens’ rent of approximately €15-€18k annually for a property they both own on Keon’s Terrace.
The Vitruvius Hibernicus name and logo, which Mr Madden still uses on his objections, can now be found in the planning files of just about every local authority.
Many of these submissions appear mischievous but they harbour very real intent.
In 2000, Mr Madden successfully objected to a development proposed by local Longford solicitor, Tom Madden (no relative).
The submission was made on behalf of ‘Fionn MacCumhaill, Oisin, The Children of Lir, Na Fianna, Longford Town FC (Convent Road Branch), the Red Branch Knights and Liam O’Maidin (champion of the proletariat and the plain people of Ireland).’
In 2003 Mr Madden was back in court after his clothes and shoes were set on fire. The case involved then Aer Rianta Chairman, Noel Hanlon.
In High Court affidavits Mr Madden described how he suffered this assault when a blow torch was deliberately pointed towards him after he asked workers on a building owned by Mr Hanlon to leave.
The following year, in 2004, he put his name forward for local election in a contest also being fought by his namesake, PD Cllr, Liam Madden.
His initial manifesto called for a ‘thorough investigation into the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and a pre-results victory party in Hughie Doyle’s pub.’
Mr Madden, admitted he’d entered the race for ‘divilment’ and pulled out. But his name remained on the ballot. ‘Don’t vote for me,’ was his slogan.
In 2007 Mr Madden was awarded €6,348 in damages by the local circuit court after he was verbally and physically abused and ‘imprisoned’ by an angry pet shop owner as he tried to inspect a property for rodent activity.
The owner told the court Mr Madden had ‘stalked and abused’ staff for years and he had been seen ‘putting mice down’ in the property. Mr Madden denied this and the court found in his favour.
In 2013, a successful An Bord Pleanála appeal against a proposal to change a restaurant in Galway into a Paddy Power bookie saw Mr Madden tell planners that gambling is a ‘mortal sin’ and should be ‘forbidden’ – among other legally-valid arguments.
The following year he objected to a planned glass lift proposed for the renovations of St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford on the basis it ‘would give rise to problems of modesty for Scotsmen visiting in their kilt’.
Another matter in 2014 saw members of Longford Town Council unanimously agree to ban Mr Madden from attending meetings for six months.
The Longford Leader reported the ban occurred almost a year after an unspecified incident ‘inside the Council chamber that caused then FG Cllr James Keogh to question his own attendance at future meetings.
After the decision, Mr Keogh remarked: ‘Is there any chance we could get him banned from Longford County Council?’
One of Mr Madden’s more successful submissions, from a publicity point of view, was in 2017 when he pledged to withdraw objections to plans for Longford’s Pearse Park stadium, if he was made captain of the county senior team.
The same submission referenced his 1969 suspension by the GAA for attending a soccer game between Longford Town and Sligo Rovers.
‘That was the day that Liam Madden gained worldwide notoriety as the last man on this planet to have been suspended by the GAA under the infamous Rule 27 for watching a soccer match,’ the submission read.
‘I have since been unable to sleep,’ he added before listing a number of tongue-in-cheek conditions.
These included the county captaincy, permission to lead the team out to the theme music of the TV series Bonanza, a change of GAA county colours to those of the Longford Town FC strip, and a written apology in Irish – which he actually received.
