I suppose there is a certain irony in the fact that the offices of the former travel company USIT, in which the Union of Students of Ireland once had a significant share – for which they reportedly trousered £9 million when they sold their stake in 2000 – looks set to possibly become another IPAS centre. The USI being so opposed to Direct Provision and all.
The building – adjacent to O’Connell Bridge in Dublin city centre – was put on sale in October 2023, and advertised by Savill’s as having “potential for a gastro pub, hotel or hostel.” Well, you can guess which one stirred the spidey senses especially as a feasibility study had noted that while a hotel might have 35 bedrooms that the building “could accommodate even more beds if it were to receive planning permission for a hostel”.
The new owners of the building have selected the hostel option but it will not be a hostel for student backpackers of the type who back in the day paid in cash for an Interrail ticket to explore Europe. Rather, it shall be one for lads, mostly lads, drawn to Ireland by our kind people or perhaps the solicitous tweets of the former Minister for Equality and Goodwill to all men.
According to the property folio for 19 – 21 Aston Quay in July 2024 the building was bought from JD Wetherspoons, the pubs operator, by Barfel Limited.
The application, filed by the new owner on February 19 “on behalf of the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth” seeks to know if their proposal to turn the building into an accommodation centre is exempt from the usual planning procedures, including proposed internal works.
An exactly worded submission on behalf of the same party was submitted on January 14 but was refused an exemption on February 10. The planning authority decided that the proposed works were not an exempted development and would require actual planning permission. The key factor appears to have been that the building is on the City Council list of protected structures.
The company named in the application is Prime BPG Estate Holdings Limited. Which is a new one to me and for the reason that it has no registration with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) here. The application was made by an agent RK Consulting which is owned by Robert Keran and is based in Lusk.
Prime BPG Estate Holdings Limited seemed to be a bit of a mystery. There is no CRO record nor any apparent connection to the number of BPG companies registered with the UK Companies House, although there may well be one. However, a search of the register of companies in the Isle of Man did turn up a company of the same name.
There is minimal information available on any company registered in the Isle of Man. However, one of the documents of association from early this month is signed by Tristan Head on behalf of a company called CCS Directors Limited. He is also a director of several other companies including Woodfield Real Estate which is also owned by CCS Directors.
CCS Directors are part of the Charterhouse Lombard Group which boasts that it is the leading provider of financial and other advice in the world. So, we ought to be damned well pleased that they have taken an interest in adding to the rich and colourful, if sometimes edgy in a Tarantinoeque way, ambience of the Dublin quays.
Charterhouse Directors is registered in the Virgin Islands. According to the UK Companies House the beneficial owners of CCS Directors are Carole Dean and David Dean who are listed as having been directors of hundreds of Isle of Man registered entities, most of them registered in 2018 and most of them dissolved in 2018. Dean is the founder and Chairperson of Charterhouse Group International., otherwise Charterhouse Lombard. The Deans were already one of the wealthiest families on the Isle of Man twenty years ago when valued at more than £65 million in 2006.
Carole Dean has one Irish CRO listing as a former director of Charterhouse Trust Ireland. David Dean was a director here of Copsehill Investments and Copsehill li. These were dissolved in 2022 and the company secretary was CCS Secretaries. One of the directors of Copsehill was Robert Huyton who was a director of a number of Charterhouse Lombard entities.
The company which bought the Aston Quay premises is Barfel Limited. There is a charge on the property from Capitalflow since the sale was agreed last Summer. Barfel is owned by Graham Barker who was a minor tech celebrity in the noughties through his canal barge entity DoSpace based in the Docklands.
Barker is also the owner of Whitefire Offices Limited, WFO Holdings and is a director of Kerlews which registered a mortgage with Fiduciam Nominees just before Christmas. The mortgage is on 1 Holles Street, Dublin 2, but according to the property records the owners of the building since 2017 are Brendan Lawless, William Hannigan, George Maybury and Maria Ryan all of 30 Merrion Square.
Kerlews changed its name from Rejuva Labs last November. Barfel only reported net assets of €100 at the end of 2022, so acquiring the building at Aston Quay adds considerably to that and it will become a bit of an ATM if their second appeal to the City Council is approved. Fingers crossed. We do not want the Deans to be out selling Big Issue on the seafront in Douglas.
The mortgage on the proposed IPAS centre is held by Capitalflow. Which in turn is owned by Bunq which is owned by Ali Niknam. Bunq bank is based in the Netherlands.
It will be interesting to see whether this consortium’s second bite at the Dublin planning cherry is successful. What we can glean from the entities involved is yet more proof that the Irish asylum accommodation Gold Rush has attracted increasing interest from all manner of go-getting entrepreneurs and financiers and who knows else for often we cannot tell from the available records.