Councillors hold off on vote to sell land to Conor McGregor’s firm

Dublin city councillors held off last week on giving their nod to the sale of an L-shaped plot of land in Drimnagh to Conor McGregor’s property firm Emrajare Limited.

Councillors are being asked to sell strips of land covering 479 square metres on the eastern and southern edges of a larger site near the Grand Canal, where permission was granted in June 2021 for 188 apartments.

Skeletal towers already reach into the sky, on the site which sits a little to the west from the Suir Road Luas stop.

The L-shaped bit councillors are being asked about selling is at the back of that construction site, largely inaccessible, behind what’s been built so far of the apartment towers.

Land sales go before the council’s area committees, and then to the full council for a final vote.

A report to councillors at a meeting of their South Central Area Committee last Wednesday, 19 March, said the council had first issued a lease on the land in August 1962 for 150 years to Vantorex Limited, for €19.62 a year in rent.

But since then, it’s changed hands a few times. The council report says the current lease assignee is Emrajare Limited.

However, property records say the current assignee since December is a different company, Randalswood Design and Build Limited – which is part of the McGrath Group – and which is also now the owner of the main larger site that it borders.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent on Tuesday asking whether the report to councillors was wrong.

McGregor Sports and Entertainment Limited, which shares a director with Emrajare Limited, didn’t respond to queries sent on Monday morning asking what the impact would be on the ongoing construction of the apartment complex if the sale wasn’t approved.

At the meeting last week though, local Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon spoke when the proposed sale came up. “I have some issues with this one,” he said.

Firstly, he said that the councillors’ code of conduct says that people who have professional, business or personal or family ties in relation to something under discussion should recuse themselves.

In particular, the code says that councillors must disclose at the meeting if they have “actual knowledge that” a “connected person” has a pecuniary interest in a matter and withdraw from the meeting and not take part in any discussion to do with it.

“That’s one part of it,” he said. He didn’t name names.

But, also in the hybrid meeting was Philip Sutcliffe, a local independent councillor, and friend of Conor McGregor.

Sutcliffe accompanied McGregor to Washington DC for McGregor’s trip to the White House earlier this month, and also to the High Court in November to hear the verdict in the civil case brought by Nikita Hand, in which a jury found McGregor had raped her.

Sutcliffe didn’t speak at all during last Wednesday’s council committee meeting discussion about the land.

He also didn’t respond to a message sent through his assistant asking what his thinking was on whether he should have declared a conflict of interest and withdrawn from that part of the meeting.

At the meeting, Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor, also said that €250,000 – or roughly €500/sqm – that the council was asking for the land, seemed low. “I’m happy to be corrected,” he said.

However, the main issue that stopped councillors from giving their verdict – and forwarding it on to a full council meeting for a final vote – was that it had apparently been brought to the wrong local area committee for discussion.

Isn’t this site just over the border into the council’s administrative South East Area? asked Pidgeon. It should probably go there, he said.

Council officials said they would check that.

On Monday, Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey, who chairs the South East Area Committee, said the disposal hadn’t come before councillors for that area yet.

He said, though, that when it comes to land disposals, his view is that councillors should be asking themselves three questions and nothing else.

“Is the council getting a good price for it? Can the council itself use it? Is it being put to good use?” he said.