While Social Democrats TD for Dublin Central, Gary Gannon, was framing the death of a convicted shoplifter on Henry Street last week as constituting a cause of fear and upset among the entire ‘migrant community,’ the Soc Dem bye-election candidate Daniel Ennis might have welcomed the distraction.
He has been at the centre of questions related to a number of issues which several of the other candidates have raised, but which have elicited little interest among the media covering the bye-election.
The first issue that was raised in relation to Ennis was that in 1997 the High Court froze bank accounts that were held in the name of his late father. That was on foot of an application by the Criminal Assets Bureau who were attempting to locate the proceeds of the £2.8 million Brinks-Allied robbery in Dublin in 1995. Jeffrey Ennis was named in the High Court as a suspect.
That investigation was the first serious attempt by the State to identify a whole range of houses, apartments, shops and pubs in the north inner city and elsewhere that were believed to have been established as fronts for the considerable resources that had been accumulated by the gang with which Ennis senior was suspected to be associated.
Since that time, the ‘legitimate’ cover for what it believed to be one of the two main organised crime gangs in Dublin has, if anything, expanded. The fact that Gerard Hutch – popularly associated with the demi monde but never having been convicted of any offence related to that organisation – is among the frontrunners in the election tells its own tale.
Daniel Ennis has, when asked about his father’s past, made the reasonable response that he and his father never discussed any of those issues. Ennis was just nine when the CAB case came to Court. It is also true that none of us are responsible for the actions of people close to us, including family, unless we were directly involved ourselves.
However, there are more recent events and associations that have emerged in relation to Daniel Ennis. This refers specifically to the fact that Ennis was Secretary of Dominic’s Bargains Limited that was established in 2021. That company owned a shop which has operated under several names but is best known as Dominic’s Crazy Bargains.
Ennis remained as Secretary of the company until November 2023 when he resigned and was replaced by Tyler O’Neill Breathnach.
In May 2022, while Ennis was still company Secretary, the shop which is located in the St. Dominic’s shopping arcade in Tallaght, was raided by officers of the Revenue services, backed by Gardaí.
During the raid the Revenue men seized 44,560 illegal cigarettes on which no tax had been paid, as well as hand rolled tobacco and around €78,000 in cash. In January this year the owner of the shop, Anthony Walsh, was convicted and fined €5,000. He has a previous conviction for the sale of imitation Viagra in the shop in 2011 and 2012.
In fairness, Walsh would appear to have been the ‘capitalist with a social conscience’ who must be close to the heart of the vision of the Soc Dems. This was sought to be substantiated in the Court by references to Walsh’s care for the homeless and generosity to a local boxing club.
In a statement calling on Daniel Ennis to clarify his relationship with the shop owned by Walsh, Dublin Central, Ian Noel Smyth, the Aontú candidate in Friday’s bye-election, noted that Ennis – apart from being Secretary of the company during the period in which the illegal activity took place – was actually working in the shop.
Daniel Ennis has claimed that his Secretaryship involved no direct involvement with the running of the shop. I contacted him to ask if he was working in the shop between 2016 and 2023 – the Irish Daily Mail earlier this month reported that Ennis was warehouse operations manager between 2018 and 2023 – but I had received no response prior to publication. Ennis had previously told the Daily Mail that “If you’re asking me if I condone or had any knowledge of Mr Walsh’s criminal activity, absolutely not.”
Ian Noel Smyth has called on Daniel Ennis to “clear the air” and claims that “In the interest of transparency and public trust, Daniel Ennis owes prospective voters an explanation on a number of matters,” particularly “his association with the company whose director was fined for having illegal cigarettes?”
“Will he tell us more about his role in the shop involved?” Smyth asks. “The Social Democrats’ leadership needs to address the questions.”
Councillor Malachy Steenson, who is running in the bye-election as an independent, has also called on Ennis to clarify his role in the company that owned the shop in which the contraband was seized.
“The Social Democrats are not slow in claiming the moral high ground on all manner of issues when it provides them with an opportunity to attack their political rivals. In that spirit they as a party need to address the questions that surround…their candidate in the bye-election.
“They might also explain how they believe that calling for the decriminalisation of drugs might assist the communities in Dublin Central that have been devastated more than any other part of the State by the gangs which have made fortunes from the sale of heroin and other drugs for the past 40 years,” he said.