Barrister told Dunne he would lose defamation case over €58m house

A top barrister told bankrupt property developer Seán Dunne that he would lose defamation proceedings he threatened some years ago after newspapers reported that he had bought a house on Shrewsbury Road, Dublin, for €58 million.

During an interview with the official assignee, Chris Lehane, earlier this year, the bankrupt businessman was reminded that he had been given an opinion by former attorney general Paul Gallagher SC "which said, in fact, that you would lose the case".

Mr Dunne said he could assure Mr Lehane that he had told the barrister that he had bought the house in trust. The price paid for the house, Walford, is believed to be the largest ever paid for a Dublin home.

“We were at one stage going to break the contract because they disclosed the purchase price, because we had put into the contract that the purchase price should not be disclosed to anybody, nor the identity of the purchaser.

“And the estate agent revealed he might have revealed both and we thought to break the contract and that’s why it dragged on for a year and that is where Paul Gallagher was involved.”

Potential site

He said he bought the house in trust for his wife, Gayle Killilea and as a potential family home or potential site. It was never the family home, he said. "We never lived in it."

During the interview, a transcript of which is now available in the examiner’s office in Dublin as part of Mr Dunne’s bankruptcy file, Mr Dunne said he had an income of $10,000 and €1,000 a month, from two property companies. He also has use of an American Express card which he uses on business. He said he also sometimes used this card for personal expenditure.

Documents contained in his file show personal expenditures in the years 2013 to 2015 of $6,750, $15,525, and $14,446, respectively, using the card.

Other documents in the file show that in the last 10 years Mr Dunne has had addresses in Greenwich, Connecticut, (three different addresses); Kensington, London; Ballsbridge, Dublin; Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris; and Geneva.