On February 14, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) issued a briefing note on the accommodation centre for International Protection applicants now placed in Abbeyville House, Fermoy. The first residents were moved into the building last week despite a long-standing protest by local people.
There are believed to be 52 current residents and the Department briefing refers to 56 beds. They were moved into the building on March 21 with the backing of a substantial deployment of Gardai. The protest has currently been stood down by the decision of the local group.
They have not suspended their objection to the centre and are continuing to seek clarity from the relevant authorities on what they claim may be possible planning irregularities, possible overcrowding, and questions around the fire certification of the building.
Amidst the usual spiel about why all of this is taking place reference is made in the Departmental briefing to the fact that a “one year contract has been signed with the provider.”.
The provider in this instance is Drakeford, who we looked at previously in relation to its involvement in a former guest house in Cork City now being used to accommodate persons who have applied for asylum.
Drakeford has done well from contracts with the Department since it began receiving payments in June 2023. In the quarters between April and September it drew down €629,480 in payments related to accommodation for asylum seekers.
Our previous piece detailed the origins and ownership of Drakeford whose only shareholder now is Connor Rainsford. In the annual return for the company made on December 27, 2023 the two equal shareholders were Aidrian McCarthy and a company called Killierisk Investment Holdings which is wholly owned by Marguerite Moynihan. They are also named in replacement annual return signed by Rainsford and Glen Gomesz as directors on January, 2024, as having transferred both of their shares to Rainsford.
Drakeford bought Abbeyville House in October 2023, a purchase that was financed through Glenigo Capital. Both Gomesz and Rainsford became directors of Drakeford on November 3, 2023 and at some stage after April 2023, Rainsford became the 100% shareholder and owner of Drakeford.
Rainsford is the secretary and 4.5% shareholder in a company called Sincere Condolences which posted losses of €15,127 to April 2023. The majority shareholder in Sincere Condolences is Adrian McCarthy who resigned as a director of Drakeford on the same day that Rainsford and Gomesz were appointed as directors.
Glen Gomesz was, and may still be, employed as a porter at the Blarney Stone which is a Drakeford owned guesthouse turned accommodation centre in Cork City.
Both Gomesz and Rainsford are directors in another company called Custom Edge Limited, which was incorporated late last year. What it is supposed to do is unclear from any of the details that it has registered with the CRO.
As with many of the companies who are involved in the provision of accommodation centres and recipients of payments, Drakeford is both relatively new and would appear to have been established for the purpose of being involved in the “activities of holding companies.”
It was incorporated with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) on July 14, 2022.
The reason why this is of interest has to do with the difficulty of discovering the background and partnerships of companies like Drakeford. In part of the briefing document issued by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) in February, they provide a section regarding the ownership of Abbeville House.
As can be seen, the reply refers intriguingly to “the sister company of the owner” which apparently has “extensive experience in the provision of accommodation centres for IPAS.” The thing is, there is no reference anywhere to such a “sister company.” It is unlikely to be Sincere Condolences, Custom Edge, or Rainsford Accounting which are the only other companies with which either Rainsford or Gomesz are registered as being a director. None are listed as providers of accommodation services up to September 2023.
Gript contacted the Department to inquire as to who the “sister company” in question is. We received what I – in a Drama Queen moment – consider to be a Kafkian missive addressed to “Dear X” from the IPAS Helpdesk. It assures me that the query has been passed on to the “relevant section” but that I probably ought not to expect any early response due to their being busy. Gript has been informed that at least one other query regarding the “sister company” received no response at all. Not even a “Dear X” blow off.
Gript and people in Fermoy and elsewhere are not the only ones to have noticed the lack of information regarding who exactly might be involved in providing accommodation centres, and even in the ownership of the companies concerned. Gript and other media outlets such as the Sunday Business Post have noted that changes to the rules governing access to company information make it impossible in many cases to discover who the ultimate owners are.
Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy referred to this in the Dáil last week when she claimed that the only thing she had been told via a query through the Committee of Public Accounts was that such companies needed to be tax compliant. It was otherwise “impossible to find out who the beneficial owners of some of these companies are,” and that there is “no way of knowing where the money is coming from or who is financially benefiting from these contracts.”
This implies no wrongdoing on the part of Drakeford or any of the other companies involved in supplying accommodation centres and related service, but such a lack of transparency is surely unacceptable given the billions of Euro involved. The people who are footing the bill for all of this – the Irish taxpayers – are entitled to know who the beneficiaries are, and that includes the mysterious “sister companies” and the sources of the funding for companies involved.
Should “Dear X” ever find out who the sister company in Fermoy is, he/she will be pleased to share such seemingly sensitive information with its readers.