A controversial developer who asked to borrow the life savings of an 81-year-old widow has failed to repay the money after half a decade of broken promises.
In 2017, the widow gave €160,000 in cash to developer Paddy Byrne, who built the Millfield Manor estate in Co. Kildare where six houses burnt to the ground in under 30 minutes in 2015.
The cash was for a penthouse apartment in Dublin she planned to move into.
The development was built by Victoria Homes, a company that was established by Mr Byrne’s sister Joan just before Mr Byrne was precluded from acting as a company director in Ireland for five years.
After viewing plans for the €630,000 property, in a development called Greygates in Mount Merrion, the pensioner withdrew the cash from her bank and gave it to Mr Byrne.
Some €10,000 of this was a deposit, with the remaining €150,000 provided on the advice of a third party who was known to Mr Byrne and the widow, who said the cash would secure a good price.
According to a handwritten receipt, signed by Mr Byrne, the money was provided on May 29, 2017.
But in November 2017 the widow, a retired primary school teacher, found a more suitable home and asked for her money back.
Mr Byrne agreed to this, saying he would have no problem selling the penthouse and promptly refunded the €10,000 deposit.
However, he asked that the remaining €150,000 be treated as a 14-month loan and promised to pay a 10% annual interest rate.
This effectively turned the widow into an unwitting creditor of Victoria Homes.
According to a handwritten agreement, signed by Mr Byrne, the loan was to be ‘paid back from the sales proceeds’ of the penthouse at his Greygates development.
More than half a decade later, the loan remains unpaid – even after the widow made a criminal complaint to gardaí and took legal action to secure a judgement.
As it is a civil matter, the Garda investigation faltered. And because various other unpaid creditors had previously secured judgements against Victoria Homes, the widow is now unlikely to get her savings back. During the Celtic Tiger years, Paddy Byrne was renowned for his €2.4m Sikorsky helicopter and sponsorship of the Irish National Hunt festival.
But in 2011 his then-firm, Barrack Homes, went bust and Mr Byrne declared bankruptcy in Britain with debts of €100m.
He was banned from acting as a UK director for 10 years in 2012.
This ban was scheduled to end in 2022 – and ran the full course – but it only applied in the UK and Wales.
According to the UK insolvency register today, Mr Byrne’s discharge from UK bankruptcy is ‘suspended indefinitely’ until the fulfilment of conditions made in a 2012 court order.
Separately, in Ireland, he was also restricted from acting as a director for a period of five years – which ended in January 2018.
Mr Byrne is also known for building the Millfield Manor estate in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, where half a dozen houses were razed to the ground within 30 minutes in 2015.
A report into the blaze found ‘major and life-threatening serious shortfalls and discrepancies and deviations from the minimum requirements of the national mandatory building regulations’ at Mr Byrne’s development.
Today, having exited bankruptcy, Mr Byrne is best known as the figurehead behind Victoria Homes and associated businesses, which was set up by his sister and her husband in December 2012, while he was bankrupt.
Mr Byrne was not a director or owner of Victoria Homes during the period of his bankruptcy. But, in 2017, Mr Byrne’s sister and her husband stepped back from Victoria Homes, transferring their shares to an offshore entity in Belize city called Victoria Holdings.
In November 2022, the main lenders to Victoria Homes – the Lotus Development Group – forced the firm into receivership for the second time.
In 2020, Lotus had forced a previous short-lived receivership before agreeing a deal that saw Victoria Homes begin trading normally once more.
Today, Mr Byrne appears to have left Victoria Homes behind and seems to be focusing on a new firm instead.
Set up in the summer of 2020, Branach Developments is entirely owned by Mr Byrne and is not encumbered by any bank debt or mortgages as Victoria Homes was.
According to the latest filed accounts, for the year ended 2021, Branach Developments held ‘tangible assets’ of €210,000 and ‘stocks’ of €600,000.
The accounts also show that, in 2021, Mr Byrne provided the company with an interest-free loan of €1,024,438.
Just last week Mr Byrne’s new firm was one of the winners at the National Property Awards sponsored by the Business Post and Deloitte, among others.
At the award ceremony, Branach Developments took home the prize for best sustainability initiative of the year.
However, Mr Byrne, who shuns publicity and is rarely photographed, does not appear to have attended the ceremony and the award was accepted by a colleague.
This week the Irish Mail on Sunday sent queries to Mr Byrne via his mobile phone, his email at Victoria Homes and his email at Branach Developments, without response.
Queries to his solicitor and the separate accountancy firms representing Victoria Homes and Branach Developments also went unanswered as did calls to the numbers on the websites of these firms.
Mr Byrne also previously declined to respond to questions from the MoS relating to the establishment of Victoria Homes during the period of his bankruptcy.
At the time, Mr Byrne appeared to be living at Ballinrahin House, close to Rathangan on the border of Offaly and Kildare.
The home is a luxury build on 26 acres of stud-railed paddocks with six stables and a 1.3km tree-lined avenue behind electric gates.
The property was on sale for €2.8m in 2009, but land registry records confirm that, in November 2014, it was sold to Victoria Homes for a knockdown price of €484,000.
Ownership of Ballinrahin House was transferred offshore to Victoria Holdings in Belize on April 10, 2018, just weeks before Mr Byrne was due to repay the €150,000 back to the widow.
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