Following the eviction, Killakee House was briefly used as an operations base by the Detective Unit of the Garda Síochána in 1931 while they hunted IRA subversives who were hiding explosives at Killakee. When the bank was unable to find a buyer for the estate, it was acquired by a builder who stripped the house and then demolished it in 1941. The lands were eventually acquired by the State and opened to the public. In the late 1930s, the Director of Forestry, a German called Otto Reinhard, laid out the area as an urban forest. The trees have reclaimed most of the land once occupied by the formal gardens: all that remains is the brickwork at the rear of the Turner glasshouses and the system of irrigation canals and ponds for the exotic plants contained within.