One of the companies that had been doing tremendously well from the asylum accommodation sector appears to have decided to give up the oul drawing down of millions of Euro from the Irish taxpayer.
For just a few days ago Pastures New Accommodation Limited filed for a voluntary strike off with the Companies Registration Office (CRO.) This means that the company in question can no longer trade, sell or acquire assets nor make or receive payments.
The meeting at which the resolution to dissolve and cease trading took place on January 20 in Dunville Terrace. It was passed and verified by company directors Brian McDermott and Jamie Deasy. The company placed a notice in the Irish Examiner on Tuesday, January 21 in which it stated that it had no assets exceeding €150 and no liabilities over €150. The company was incorporated on April 21, 2023 and has never filed a financial statement.
Another company just called Pastures New Accommodation appears to be still on the company register. It is listed as having the same directors, McDermott and Deasy, and as owned by Total Experience Limited which is owned by Good Pasture Holdings Limited which also owned the Pastures New Accommodation Limited – now ceased to be – and Good Pasture Holdings Limited is listed as jointly owned by McDermott and Deasy.
Pastures New Accommodation was registered with the CRO in October 2023 and has also never filed a financial statement. Total Experience which was incorporated in 2006, and which McDermott and Deasy became directors of in 202*, has filed financial statements.
Founded to promote events and hospitality, and bought by Paul Keogh and Brian Keogh of Lacken, County Wicklow before being acquired by McDermott and Deasy, its fortunes improved tremendously after 2022. Current assets increased from €110,694 at the end of 2022 to €5,218,468 at the end of 2023.
That was not unrelated to Total Experience, now owned by McDermott and Deasy through Good Pastures, having begun to wet its beak in the asylum accommodation bowl. Its first payments arrived into the piggy bank on November 27, 2023 and since then, up to the end of September 2024, it has drawn down a total of €24,905,969.
In March last year Total Experience was forced to go to the High Court where they were granted an injunction against protestors objecting to their new asylum seeker facility at Newhall outside Naas. Ukrainians under Temporary Protection were moved in last May. They were being accommodated in cabins on a site that was planned to take up to 1,000.
But back to the company which has just applied to be struck off: While more than €5 million was received in 2023, Pastures New Accommodation Limited appears not to have been paid since April 29 last year, when a measly €49,069 was sent to them. Pastures New Accommodation Limited is the company that is listed on the payments list.
It is important, I believe, in the interests of accuracy and due diligence on my part to note that this is the same company that has decided to fold up its tent (a not inappropriate metaphor as we shall see below). When the injunction was taken against the Newhall protestors the company concerned was referred to as “Total Experience trading as Pastures New” so one might surmise that Total Experience now holds whatever contracts Pastures New Accommodation was associated with.
It received no payments for the first three months of 2024, but between its first payment on September 25, 2023 (it was only incorporated in April that year) and April 2024 it had received €5,146,069 from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY).
The total payments for the companies owned by McDermott and Deasy as far as can be told stood at more than €30 million at the end of September last. Not bad for two lads who began in the humble events industry and who also own Event Fuel which has organised corporate events for the likes of Paddy Power, Allied Irish Bank, and Paypal. Deasy was also involved in TV and film including as an assistant producer on Neil Jordan’s Byzantium.
McDermott and Deasy’s entry into the heady and lucrative work of the accommodation sector appears to have been through the IPAS centre at the old ESB building in East Wall where they secured the management contract from Gateway Integration. They were also involved in the accommodation of Ukrainian refugees in tents at the Electric Picnic site at Stradbally in September 2023.
That contract was with Pastures New and while much was made of the unsuitability of the site for the Ukrainians, and it was claimed that they would only be there until the end of September 2023 that contract was extended for another eight months in October 2023. It ended with the next Electric Picnic. So presumably the payments ended when the contract ended.
Likely inspired by the blue-sky thinking of putting refugees in tents, in October 2023, McDermott and Pastures New rocked up to Annamoe in the County of Wicklow to propose to the, not-altogether convinced, local people that placing people in cabins under tents might be a wheeze. Within a few weeks of that becoming public knowledge, and exciting considerable opposition, it was decided that the project would not proceed.
It is a pity now that they have had to jack one of their companies but we are certain that the ever changing landscape of the accommodation sector will present them with new opportunities. Perhaps even, given their association through Event Fuel with Leinster Rugby, the two boys might yet realise the dream of many and see the Aviva Stadium turned into an asylum centre complete with tents and cabins. Or even tents under cabins. With Heino on tap.