When is a handout a handout? July 11, 2017

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized

When it’s a handout from the state to support the Iveagh Markets development. At least that’s what it looks like reading the three page spread at the weekend in the SBP on publican and developer Martin Keane’s plea after twenty years of effective stasis on the project. He’s held the lease that twenty years but so far nothing has happened.

He says:

All told I need in excess of €100 million. I have a lot of stuff debt-freehand I don’t mind using profits from something else to subsidise. I’m not putting out my paw and saying give me €30million.

Except, except that he is then quoted..

…he is open to using his won money again to finish the project on top of the €28m he has already put in but only if the state comes up with the financing he is demanding.

Or as the SBP puts it further…

Keane says the project cannot proceed without a cash injection from the state as market financing would be prohibitively expensive and render the project unprofitable.

I’m not sure how he squares the first assertion quoted above with the quote from the same article, indeed practically the same paragraph, in the SBP. But the paper draws attention to a basic problem… the basic business plan doesn’t look like it would be profitable – bailout or not.

Tina McVeigh of Solidarity-PBP (and Rebecca Moynihan of the LP) is quoted in the article drawing attention to the necessity for the building to revert back to DCC and for Keane to withdraw. And there’s more.

McVeigh also lashed out against the prospect of an operating company paying Keane a rent. “Mr Keane expects the local authority of fund a business plan while the community and this city wait 20 years for this iconic building to be restored.’

Difficult to disagree.