On Monday a resident of Ardee, County Louth, received a notice from the Freedom of Information Officer at the Department of Justice in which she was informed that the Department had decided to “part grant” a request for information regarding Setanta House/Setanta Guesthouse on 7 Castle Street.
The request had been for the release of:
All of the information requested where it related to the letters of agreement between the Department of Integration and Brimwood which is owned by Séamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney was refused.
The refusal was justified on the basis that information on “the Department’s negotiating position on such matters where significant public funding is involved … would hamper our ability to negotiate effectively,” and therefore “poses a clear risk to the public interest”.
Other reasons included that such information would hinder the “Department’s ability to ensure value for money,” “law enforcement and public safety,” and that the “vital interests of the community are best serviced by not releasing the record.”
The letter of refusal lists 79 pages of documents dating from September 2019 to July 2024. Only one page, dated June 24, 2020, was released.
This is a heavily redacted letter “regarding the movement of IPAS residents from Cluskey’s to Setanta House/Guesthouse”.
Cluskey’s at Little Ash outside of Dundalk had to close due to water issues and the 11 residents were removed to Setanta. Cluskey’s has since been changed over to use as emergency homeless family accommodation and is listed as a hub in the North East Region Homeless Action Plan.
SETANTA ASYLUM AGREEMENT SINCE 2019
What the letter does confirm is that Setanta was in use as asylum accommodation at that time and indeed one of the documents refused release refers to an agreement between the Department of Integration and the contractor, Brimwood, for the provision of such accommodation from April 1, 2019.
The curious thing about that is that there is no record of any planning permission or exemption having been sought or granted until November 22, 2024 when Louth County Council allowed that there was an exemption “to provide accommodation for persons seeking international protection.”
I contacted Louth County Council to ask if they can “confirm that no planning application or notification of an exemption regarding Setanta House, 7 Castle Street, Ardee, was made until October 2024 even though Departmental records show that the premises has been in use as asylum accommodation since 2019.”
I had received no reply prior to publication.
All of this is worth pointing out because for years – until the Ardee resident took the trouble to pursue the issue – it was effectively denied that asylum seekers were living in the Setanta and no member of the County Council ever raised the lack of planning applications or permissions.
What the diligence shown by the resident has proven is that with regards to Setanta House that it has operated under State contract from April 2019, despite the fact that there is no planning permission on record, no declaration that the premises was exempted until November 2024, and that there is no publicly available exemption covering 2019–2024.
Which means that Banty’s Ardee facility appears to have operated under formal State agreements for approximately five and a half years before any planning opinion was issued. It should be noted that such an exemption cannot retrospectively regularise prior unauthorised use. So the November decision by the Louth planners cannot be backdated to 2019.
Another curious aspect of the planning surrounding the building itself is there are very few references to it other than the post-dated exemption notice granted last November and the granting of permission in 2005 to previous owners for a four-storey extension to the rear of the 3-storey building to provide another 9 bedrooms.
There were no other planning applications in the period between 1993 and 2024 and none that related to the provision of accommodation of asylum seekers. Even prior to the emergency statutory instruments in 2022 and 2023, any change of use to asylum accommodation would have required a Section 5 exemption under the 2000 Planning and Development Act, and there is no record of any reference to such for the Setanta Guesthouse.
Nor is there any reference to applications for change of use to offices but there are a number of businesses currently registered with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) with an address at 7 Castle Street, Ardee. Some of them appear to be connected to the former owners of the Setanta guesthouse.
Three of the companies have been registered since the building began to be used as an IPAS accommodation centre. Among them is Angel Gabriel Logistics, established in 2021 and owned by Eric Ngwenya.
Bestano-Touch Healthcare Services which is involved in “social work” was registered at the address in 2022 and is owned by Nigerian national Stanley Oligbi. Another company Division Development Global, which describes itself as involved in the wholesaling of coffee, tea, cocoa and spices, was registered in December 2024, and is owned by Moses Smith.
All of this hive of activity has been at a premises which appears to have existed in a parallel universe to the one that would normally operate under the eagle eye of local planners quick to note any shop sign or appendage that has not been properly notified and approved.
The wonderful universe inhabited by the Captains of Caring.