By: Michael O’Farrell

Investigations Editor

BANKRUPT developer Tony Gaughan (pictured right) transferred a substantial seaside house to his partner, former TD Beverley Flynn, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The house is one of a number of valuable properties – including 20 hectares of Castlebar development land – that Mr Gaughan transferred to Ms Flynn in recent years as his construction businesses collapsed with debts of €40m to AIB. That debt is now in Nama.

The MoS, which first revealed Mr Gaughan’s bankruptcy last year, has previously reported on further asset sales and transfers worth millions that the Mayo developer made prior to his bankruptcy.

One of those assets – a house in Castlebar in which Ms Flynn runs a crèche – was transferred to the couple’s school-going daughter, Caoilinn. Mr Gaughan was due to be discharged last Wednesday from a year-long UK bankruptcy which was instigated in September 2013 by a creditor in Bristol. The creditor is owed just €15,560, compared with the €40m owed to Irish taxpayers and a further €2m owed to Ulster Bank.

But on April 7, 2010, when his property empire was in decline, Mr Gaughan signed over a 225 square metre home on 5.6 acres to Ms Flynn and Cheree McHale, a then director of his construction company.

Ms McHale, who resigned as a director of Mr Gaughan’s company in 2011, told the MoS this week that the house was in a trust and said she had ‘absolutely nothing to do with it’ despite still being registered as a half owner.

‘I have no beneficial interest in the Doohoma property. I no longer work for TJ Gaughan Construction,’ she added. Named ‘Paris’ the property in Doohoma, Co. Mayo, has its own direct access to the seafront and dramatic views over Clew Bay to Croagh Patrick.

The Doohoma house, occupying the large peninsula, has three en suite bedrooms, a study, lounge, open-plan kitchen and a large patio at the rear. Its considerable floor area means it is larger than most houses in the area. Other smaller, 150sq.m, three-bed homes on one acre sites are selling in the area for €250,000.

Planning permission for the house was obtained in the name of Mr Gaughan’s cousin – Pauline Szewczuk – in 2005 and a local-needs stipulation meant the property had to be occupied by the immediate family of Mrs Szewczuk for at least five years.

Exactly five years after planning was granted the home was transferred into the name of Mr Gaughan before being transferred on to Ms Flynn that same day.

A note placed on the property’s deeds – and dated April 7, 2010 – states that Mr Gaughan has the right to reside there for the duration of his life.

In January of this year, AIB listed a restriction on the file which requires that the bank be notified before the property’s owners can register any sale or disposal of the property.

Although Mr Gaughan listed an address in Bristol when he was made bankrupt in September 2013, he has been seen in Castlebar and is understood to have stayed in the Doohoma home while in Ireland.

A registered letter in his name was accepted there this week by a local woman whom the local postman described as Mr Gaughan’s housekeeper.

In her 2010 declaration of interests – completed retrospectively in early 2011 – Beverley Flynn did not include the Doohoma property, despite acquiring a half share of it in April 2010, when she was a sitting TD. Under ethics legislation all Oireachtas members must disclose their land interests worth in excess of €13,000.

Ms Flynn ceased to be a member of the Dáil after the February 2011 general election but was nevertheless required to file a declaration of interests for the previous year.

Property records confirm that Mr Gaughan also transferred approximately 50 hectares of Castlebar development land to Ms Flynn on March 15, 2012. This transfer involved the consolidation of lands owned by Mr Gaughan personally and by his company TJ Gaughan Construction into a folio now owned by Ms Flynn.

The ownership of these lands means Ms Flynn could reap the benefits of an emerging property market in Mayo where a 57% increase in property sales was recorded during the first six months of this year.

Having exited bankruptcy, according to the British Insolvency Register this week, Mr Gaughan will now be in a position to start trading again with a clean slate and his debts erased.

Substantial assets in several different countries were sold or transferred before Tony Gaughan was listed bankrupt in September 2013.

The ownership changes mean the assets – which include the Castlebar crèche, a €2m Spanish villa and a lucrative property company in Poland – are no longer available to help repay the millions of euro Mr Gaughan owes.

Nama told the MoS it could not comment when asked if it had authorised the transfers and whether they had resulted in any outstanding debts being repaid by Mr Gaughan.

But last December the agency appointed receivers to Mr Gaughan’s Irish company, TJ Gaughan Construction Ltd, in a bid to recover unpaid debts associated with a string of outstanding AIB loans.