Fingleton property adjoins INBS branch

FORMER IRISH Nationwide chief executive Michael Fingleton owns the building next door to the building society’s Phibsborough branch in Dublin, according to records at the Registry of Deeds.

The property at 67 Phibsborough Road passed into Mr Fingleton’s name in December 2002 from John James P MacKenzie, though records show a 35-year lease on the building was granted by Mr Fingleton to the charity Oxfam from July 1st, 1992.

The charity runs a shop in the building. A spokesman for Oxfam said: “We have 49 stores all around the country and we don’t know who owns a lot of these properties.”

Mr Fingleton did not return a call seeking comment.

The new management team at Irish Nationwide investigated a question raised at a meeting of members of the building society in December 2009 about whether Mr Fingleton owned any of the building society’s branches.

The query was raised by Michael Maughan, executive chairman of the Dublin-based motors, property and kitchen brands business Gowan Group.

The building society’s chairman Danny Kitchen said in reply that, to the best of his knowledge, Mr Fingleton did not own any of the society’s branch properties.

The building society’s new management are understood to have found no evidence Mr Fingleton owned any buildings across the 50-branch network.Mr Fingleton had put Irish Nationwide on the market in 2007 but he decided to postpone the sale following the onset of the global financial crisis.

The society has been taken into State control due to heavy losses on the loans to property developers and land speculators.

The Government is pumping €5.4 billion – amounting to more than half of Irish Nationwide’s loan book – into the lender to cover the losses.

Documents released this week show Mr Fingleton refused to accept the building society was in deep trouble a week before the €440 billion guarantee by the Government in September 2008.

* This article was amended on November 4th, 2010