'Barmaid' Daria Weiske gets a drink for Patsy Brogan at the 'Bog Hotel' in Bluestack Mountains, which Donegal County Council has ordered to be shut down

A LOCAL authority has taken action to shut down an alleged shebeen, deep in the hills of Donegal.

The infamous 'bog hotel', situated in the Bluestack mountains near Frosses, in the south west of the county, has been labelled as an unauthorised development by Donegal County Council.

The council has threatened owner Patsy Brogan with court proceedings that could end in fines of up to €12m and two years in jail if he refuses to comply with an order to remove a bar and lounge from a shed on his property.

It also demands that he remove old cars, caravan wrecks and lorry parts which the council says add up to the operation of an illegal scrap yard.

Mr Brogan, who has insisted that he is not running a commercial bar and it is not a shebeen, said he won't be removing it.

He describes it as a private facility he shares with friends and he has denied claims that he charges for drink, although some visitors are known to have left "donations" in a large jar.

"I'm not doing anything illegal. They will have to shoot me to get rid of the bar," he said.

Mr Brogan added that he is trying to clean up the yard and that council officials have conceded he had made progress.

Wrecks

He said one of the wrecks he has been ordered to move is an uninhabitable caravan that is the council's own property. It was provided as a temporary home.

The council notice instructs him to return the shed bar to its original state. But Mr Brogan insists he built it as a playroom for his children and, when they reached their teens, added a disco facility.

He says the bar that he built in the same shed as the disco, although up to pub standard, is no different to private bars in other homes.

He has not been prosecuted because gardai say they cannot produce evidence that drink is being sold.

There is a "barmaid" -- a 28-year-old Polish woman, Daria Weiske -- whom the 70-year-old Mr Brogan says is his girlfriend, although she laughs off the claim.

The council notice was pinned to the door of Mr Brogan's home on January 29. When officials called him a couple of weeks later he claimed he had not seen the notice, so a copy was sent to him along with a photocopy of a photograph of a garda standing beside it on the date of the original delivery.

The notice is served under the same law that provides for the prosecution of large corporations for breaches of planning regulations. Conviction could result in a maximum penalty of €1,904.61 and six months jail. If a prosecution is conducted in a higher court, the maximum penalty could be €12.69m and two years in jail.

The "bog hotel" earned its nickname from its remote location and its owner's readiness to serve drink to callers, no matter what the time.

It earned widespread public attention when it was discovered to be the last place visited by a young man who died later the same day in January after a night of partying.

Gardai have ruled out any link between his death and his visit to the 'bog hotel'.