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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— March - April 2012
T
he High Court will now hear in full
Treasury Holdings’ action against NAMA’s
bid to put many of its Irish properties into
receivership with Ernst Young.
Treasury, one of the ten biggest borrowers with
the State loans agency, feels it is on the verge of a
deal favourable to both it and NAMA – to sell its
portfolio to third-party investment companies, but
it has failed to repay loans of around € mil-
lion. NAMA also claims Treasury diverted €.
million in shares from a related company to its
directors, just before Treasury’s portfolio went
into NAMA. Nice.
Treasury, Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett,
inspire awe and respect in financial, political and
media circles but I have had reason to be circum-
spect, myself, over the years.
Johnny is an accountant whose father was a
wealthy pig farmer in Tipperary and whose cousin
is Vita Cortex’s Jack Ronan. Richard comes from
a family of Ballina millers. They were at school
together in Castleknock College.
I first met Richard and Johnny in the mid-s
when they were developing the Hilton (subse-
quently Westin) Hotel on Dublin’s College Green.
I was opposing their plan for the biggest destruc-
tion of listed and historic buildings in Dublin since
the s.
After they got their permission, an academic
advised us that they should clearly have con-
ducted an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
because of the significant “nature, size and loca-
tion” of the ‘project’. We decided the scheme was
unsustainable and uncivilised, Treasury’s attitude
cocky and the planning authorities’ flouting of the
law on EIA outrageous – so we would attack their
scheme in the courts.
Treasury allegedly played dirty and were
involved in twenty-six other sets of litigation. An
Taisce, which I had been representing, didn’t want
the risk of a devastating legal-costs order, we didn’t
want the inevitable PR storm to blow away vulner-
able individuals and we didn’t want personal legal
liability for costs, so we formed a company that
could take the litigation.
We had little time so we got a pre-formed ‘shelf’
company, the chivalric-sounding, “Lancefort’. After
appearances in the High-Court and six days in
the Supreme Court Lancefort lost its case on the
primary ground that, although it was okay to liti-
gate through a company that had not even existed
at the time of the Bord Pleanála decision which it
was challenging, the protagonists in the company,
primarily I, should have raised the need for an EIA
before An Bord Pleanála. The chief justice Ronan
Keane seemed to imply I had known of the point
at the time, even though I did not and there was no
evidence to that effect. Usually the Supreme Court
does not invent facts. Furthermore European law
clearly states it is the obligation of the authorities
to conduct the EIA.
Academics and practitioners generally accept
that the Lancefort decision is wrongly-decided.
Since that time – – EIA (and its plan-
focused counterpart (SEA) has taken off as a tool
for residents and environmentalists in assessing
the impact of what is being imposed on them – if
only because it often requires photomontages of
the proposed scheme and an indication that the
developer fully considered the alternatives.
During the campaign we were assailed by
Treasury and their PR team – and I guess since
Johnny Ronan reckoned we cost them €m, we
were fair game.
Irish Times environment correspondent, Frank
McDonald, is often one of the most acute and cou-
rageous commentators on these matters. But he is
close to Richard Barrett – as well as to some of us
in the campaigning sector, and he wrote several
damaging reports including pieces misrepresent-
ing our European Law stance in a way unwittingly
likely to annoy Irish judges, mis-stating the num-
bers of listed/historic buildings on the site and
giving extraordinary coverage to the support-
ers of the scheme – including a fawning profile of
David Slattery, the ‘conservation’ architect who
was writing off the value of some of the buildings
to the benefit of Treasury, in an interview under
the headline “Keeper of the Past”.
When we lost the case, Frank McDonald in the
Irish Times quoted Richard Barrett saying “his [ie
my] house is gone” and that “I” faced legal costs
of £m. In fact, we were always going to escape
the costs of the case because the company was a
separate vehicle from its directors, who at vari-
ous stages included heritage activists Garret Kelly,
Ian Lumley, Tony Lowes and in the end my gamey
brother.
Nonetheless Lancefort finished up compre-
hensively liquidated. Treasury later boasted that
“certain opponents of ours have underestimated
our ability to cause legal havoc to their detriment”.
This was probably true.
At one stage, when the publicity was bad and
the case looked fragile, we had discussions with
Johnny Ronan about settling our case and it appears
some of our lawyers got further with instructions
we gave them than we had understood. We were
then skewered by Matt Cooper in the Sunday
Tribune and Cliodhna Ó’Donoghue of the prop-
erty section of the Irish Independent in aggressive
but not entirely unfair features that made it sound
like we were seeking money for ourselves rather
Buccaneers
michael smith
The Treasury boys once had little Dublin at their feet
news
The boys and political friend
than building-conservation causes (which we were
not). We had discussed a wide range of possible
resolutions ‘without prejudice’ and got nowhere
close to agreeing any of them.
It emerged a little later that Cliodhna
Ó’Donoghue was the beneficiary of a major Italian
trip paid for by Treasury in , encompassing
the inevitable Celtic Pavarotti extravaganza.
I
n I was invited by current affairs maga-
zine, Magill, to write about all this for a new
‘rant’ column it was instigating. Not too sure
of what they expected, I wrote a wry piece,
like this one, and advised them to check it for libel
and tone before hearing nothing more for months
(magazine-article commissioners can be insensi-
tive). The next I heard was from the Irish Times
asking me if I knew about the scrapping of an
entire print run of Magill. It appears that Emily
O’Reilly, the then incoming editor and a friend
of Frank McDonald, didn’t like the article which
had been commissioned under her predecessor,
Vincent Browne. But hadn’t bothered to inform
me. The Sunday Tribune implied the article was
libellous but that seems unlikely.
I also remember the boys (you have to call
them the boys) at around that time when Paul
Clinton was trying to develop the vast Carlton
Site between Dublin’s O’ Connell St and Moore
St. Irritatingly for Clinton, Treasury proposed a
detailed scheme designed by André Wejchert for
Clinton’s site, even though Treasury didn’t own
it, a scheme which almost inexplicably made its
way into Dublin Corporation’s plan for the area.
Treasury advised him that if he did not let the boys
develop his site as a joint venture with him they
would ensure he was denied planning permis-
sion, they (hilariously in view of the analogy to
the Lancefort Case) would sue to demand an EIA
and ‘take the case to Europe’ and that if after all
that he got permission they would ensure he was
compulsorily purchased by Dublin Corporation.
Barrett, the alleged sophisticate, told Clinton
that Treasury was “torturing” and had its “feet
on the throat” of adjoining developer Garret
Kelleher (who subsequently attempted to build
North America’s tallest residential building in
Chicago). They used a small site they owned for
its “strategic nuisance value” against mild-man-
nered Kelleher, pressurised their mutual bank,
Anglo Irish, to make life difficult for him and
inveighed that like cowboys they were going to
(yawn) “run him out of town”.
When Frank Connolly printed this in the
Sunday Business Post, Barrett threatened to sue
the newspaper for € million in damages and to
“sue the pants off” Paul Clinton for €m Euro –
though of course after the threat made its way into
the adoring media, no more was heard of it.
Cutting the story short... twelve years later just
as Dublin City Council was on the brink of com-
pulsorily purchasing his land, Clinton sold out on
favourable terms to Joe O’Reilly, the developer
of the Dundrum Shopping Centre. (Complexly,
Paul Clinton is now a partner of mine in a food
venture.)
Subsequently, Treasury fronted the vast and
over-scaled Spencer Dock scheme. It failed after
Bertie sort of came out against it to assuage his
constituents, though both he and his successor,
Cowen, went all knock-kneed in the presence of
the boys, particularly of Barrett.
Clinton and I were by now well out of love
with Treasury, who were everywhere. Clinton
drew attention to the extraordinary deal they had
with malleable CIÉ, which owned the site of the
National Convention Centre (NCC), a deal which
left state-owned CIÉ with nearly all the potential
downside risk and none of the land-carry costs of
the Spencer Dock scheme and NCC. Fifteen years
later it emerged the deal on the NCC was massively
skewed against the state. For example, the state
phOtO: williaM hederMan
— March - April 2012
paid € million to the consortium behind the
NCC in its first year – a subsidy of more than €
for each visitor. The state will pay the consortium
about € million over years before the cen-
tre reverts to state ownership. Inconveniently it
is not clear if the NCC is being targeted by NAMA
for receivership as a part of the legal proceedings.
If so, the state may finally get a fair share in this
scandalously-lopsided deal.
A
fter Spencer Dock, Treasury set their
sights abroad and were the preferred
bidder for the renowned Millennium
Dome in London. Big Players the
Boys Then. Clinton and I discovered an affidavit
signed by Ronan showing that he attempted to
rig a tender process for the purchase of the Royal
Dublin Hotel on O’Connell St. Johnny claims the
sales agent told him the highest price anyone
had bid so he could bid a few pound more than
that. When Johnny did so he found in fact the
other bidder had come in a little higher still,
so Johnny had come in second. Out-foxed and
furious, Johnny sued the agent. He actually sued
the agent for not delivering on a fraudulent deal.
Now there’s style.
We gave his affidavit to BBC ‘Newsnight’ and
the Financial Times, which used it sniffily to sus-
tain the case that Treasury were ethically dubious
and that the boys were “buccaneers”. Treasury
duly lost out on the bid.
After that I lost touch with Johnny and
Richard. I know they wrecked the demesne
around Powerscourt House in Co Wicklow with
a cheesy Las Vegas Ritz-Carlton hotel, built
the madly ill-conceived highish-rise ‘Central
Park’ in faraway Sandyford, planned to destroy
ancient Bremore with a container port to import
half of China and failed to redevelop the fading
Stillorgan Shopping Centre. I know they ran Real
Estate Opportunities (REO) for dramatic returns
for themselves as agents. That, like many devel-
opers, they had a nice set-up with Séanie Fitz, who
sat on the board of the Docklands Authority while
simultaneously bank-rolling many of the schemes,
including Spencer Dock, for which the Authority
decided lucrative planning permissions, though
he recused himself where appropriate. That they
rented their Treasury Building headquarters to
Fianna Fáil at election time and that they rent it
to NAMA as its own headquarters.
I know they claim to control over individ-
ual real estate projects with a combined value in
excess of €. billion. I know they got into China
and that Richard moved there and said anyone
who wasn’t in China was an eejit.
They at least tried to use good architects and
gave a good bit of money – admittedly money
that has turned out to be your and my money –
to charity.
Mostly like the rest of gossip-starved Ireland
I read about them in the media. Frank McDonald
wrote books consigning endless admiring, ill-
judged acres of dead forestry to Johnny who is
“good fun” and Richard who “one unnamed indus-
try source” said was the “cleverest man I ever met”.
It turns out Richard writes poetry too. And reads
tomes on land law in bed.
As to my own dealings with them, we shared a
few shape-throwing pints when we were oppos-
ing their schemes. I always found Johnny friendly
in a basic way whenever I met him but Richard
I have found cold. In general, these particular
Celtic tigers seem stronger on hubris than any
sense of irony. That matters.
Johnny became fodder for the Sunday
Independent and tabloids, his badger-like (Fergal
Keane on ‘Drive Time’ naughtily said “skunk-
like”) ‘good looks’ and penchant for drop-kicking
models and whimsical long-distance travel by
Nama-underwritten private jet not appar-
ently jarring with editorial stances. On the eve
of Treasury’s injunctive proceedings against
NAMA, it was notable that the Sunday newspa-
pers detailed Treasury’s perspective only, failing
to record, for example, NAMA’s concern about
the diversion of shares beyond its reach.
But it may be a last hurrah.
Now they have lost Battersea in London
to their banks. And most of their Irish prop-
erty is likely to fall out of their grasp, once they
have inevitably seen their litigation through to
the Supreme Court. This would leave Treasury
Holdings as common bankrupts really, worse
than social-welfare liggers.
Nevertheless, the well-dined media love them.
And though Treasury has been unseated in Britain,
has been bailed out in Ireland and may well face
bankruptcy, Johnny and Richard still, eejits that
we are, have China.
phOtO: williaM hederMan
