It was reported on Tuesday that the Avon Hotel in Blessington, County Wicklow, is to be turned over from accommodation of Ukrainian refugees under Temporary Protection fully to the accommodation of persons who have applied for International Protection and who are under the responsibility of IPAS. This was on foot of an inquiry by Sinn Féin TD John Brady to the Department of Justice.
Local Independent Councillor Gerry O’Neill, who represents west Wicklow on Wicklow County Council, has said that persons under IPAS have been living in the Avon and in the Lakeshore Holiday Village for the past year.
Cllr O’Neill believes that international protection applicants had been moved into the Avon from Kippure Lodge which appears to be under the same management and ownership.
In a response to another, earlier query from Councillor O’Neill, he was told that in April there were eleven IPAS centres in County Wicklow and that they had a total occupancy of 1,455. Among the centres listed are the Avon in Blessington – one of six in the Baltinglass Municipal District area which accommodate 790 persons under the care of IPAS.
O’Neill has been raising issues regarding all of the centres in the county, most of which have involved controversies of various kinds. He has received very little information in return and pointed out that when he and one or two other local representatives were standing up for the communities in West Wicklow that others were not.
I contacted Deputy Brady to ask what had been in the reply from the Department and whether he had been aware that The Avon was already designated as an IPAS centre. Deputy Brady said that he had been told yesterday by the Department that “there are 95 people living in The Avon, of which some are those seeking International Protection.”
“There was no breakdown of this figure provided. The Department intends that the Ukrainian Community currently living here will be vacated by the 8th of August. I will be following this up with the Department and the Minister for Justice seeking urgent clarification of the information provided and voicing my concerns.”
As we reported in July last year, The Avon forms just one link in a nexus of related companies and individuals who have done very well from the provision of accommodation for both Ukrainians under Temporary Protection and applicants for International Protection.
The Avon site has been owned since 2021 by Goldstein Property ICAV, having previously been a property that had been under the control of the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) for one year between 2014 and 2015. There is a charge on the site, with Relm Loan Opportunities 2, which is dated three days after Goldstein were registered as full owner.
According to the Companies Registration Office (CRO), The Avon, as an accommodation premises, is owned by a company called Arturo Ventures Unlimited. The directors of Arturo Ventures Unlimited are Carol Dwyer and Sinéad Fennelly and the secretary of the company is Millbank Trustees.
Millbank Trustees is rather interesting because when I last mentioned them the registered owner was Carol Dwyer. She was the sole shareholder of Millbank in December 2023. However, it turns out that Millbank Trustees is now fully owned by a chap called Patrick Doyle. Patrick Doyle was the original director of Beacon Company Secretaries back in 2002. That is now owned solely by Carol Dwyer.
Doyle has an address in Celbridge and is currently a director of 12 companies – and the former director of another 4,082 companies. Including, believe it or not, U2 Limited which is owned through the serendipitously named Not Us Limited by the four boys Bono, the Edge, Adam and Larry from where the streets have no name.
Arturo Ventures Limited is owned by a company called Edgewell – which is not registered as a company in the state. Edgewell is wholly owned by another company, Bergvon, but there are no company records for any such entity with the CRO here. It is registered in the Isle of Man. Bergvon was registered in the Isle of Man on March 1,2023 and changed its name to Besga on December 13, 2023.
The Isle of Man company records show that the application of March 1, 2023 stated that Bergvon was a limited partnership between Jetara Unlimited and Biska Unlimited both with the same address at the East Wall IPAS accommodation centre. Carol Dwyer also signed their most recent Isle of Man return in March this year. She was not required to complete the section which only applies if the company is not benefitting from the 2017 Beneficial Ownership Act.
That in effect means that we have no idea who the actual owners of the companies are and therefore who the ultimate beneficiaries of the accommodation payments are.
Biska is listed as owned by the Ballyglen Foundation. There is no entity called Ballyglen Foundation registered as a company here. As with Bergvon/Besga, Ballyglen is also registered in the Isle of Man. Its application and foundation instrument was registered in Douglas on the same day as Bergvon.
What is interesting in this case, however, is that while Dwyer and Fennelly are listed as members of the Foundation’s “council”, all details of the founders, beneficiaries and shareholders are redacted. Which likely indicates that Dwyer and Fennelly are not the principals.
Sinéad Fennelly is also the only director and sole shareholder in Fennelly Advisory which has an address at the Kippure Estate – the site of an accommodation centre managed by Seefin Events, of which she is a director along with Carol Dwyer. Fennelly is also a director of other companies – Jetara, Airways Centre, Burvea and Gateway Integration which have made tens of millions in accommodation payments.
She is also a director of Dougfield Management which is the management company for the Lakeshore Holiday estate, which is on the same site as the Avon, which is not an hotel although sometimes called as such. The other director of Dougfield is a chap called Eoghan Coughlan of Goldstein/Quanta which owns the Avon. Goldstein also owns the adjacent Lakeshore Holiday Village since June 2024.
If Carol Dwyer was the actual owner of companies such as Millbank Trustees she would be among the very wealthiest of people in the state. That is likely not the case. Which brings us back to the question of who the real beneficiaries and owners might be.
One clue as to who might be among the beneficiaries is provided by the information we have about the ownership and management of some of the buildings where the centres are located. In January 2024, we got a glimpse of this through the proposal to use the former St. Mary’s nursing home in Ballsbridge as an accommodation centre for persons claiming International Protection.
The nursing home had been planned to be a build to rent apartment scheme managed by Richmond Homes, part of the Avestus Capital group, an overseas company some might unkindly refer to as a “vulture”.
The Ballsbridge site was then bought by Goldstein Property – the owners of Avon in Blessington – which via Quanta Capital is linked to the American giant management fund, Oaktree, which controlled assets of more than $170 billion in 2023. Goldstein/Quanta also own the premises at East Wall, the address of several of the Dwyer linked companies, and the site at the Airways industrial estate in Santry which is connected to Airways Centre Unlimited.
Goldstein/Quanta also own the Kippure Estate in Wicklow that is managed by Seefin Events. The accommodation centre in Ballsbridge is managed by Burvea. And yet you will find no record of Goldstein/Quanta, let alone Oaktree, as beneficiaries of the gravy train of asylum payments.
Quanta Capital is registered as wholly owned by Mel Sutcliffe. The other directors are Erin Madden and Eoghan Coughlan who is also listed as a director of Goldstein Holdings registered in the Isle of Man. Barrister Joe Christle was the founder of Quanta Capital and is a director of Goldstein Properties UK. Madden was also a director of the Christle owned Katava Capital.
Christle, Sutcliffe and Coughlan are also directors of Fane Investments, which is wholly owned by Goldstein Properties, which is registered as an Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle (ICAV) which means that it is investing money in Ireland mostly for companies and persons based overseas who can avail both of attractive tax concessions and anonymity.