A GROUP of business people and professionals from Birr and Kilkenny own the Co Offaly offices leased by Fás at a cost that is 77 per cent above the Comptroller and Auditor General’s upper benchmark for office leases in the area.
Fás leased premises from the Birr Technology Investment Consortium in Birr Technology Centre for use as its new headquarters as part of decentralisation.
In a report during the week the Comptroller and Auditor General John Buckley said Fás entered into a 10-year lease in 2007 at a cost of €99,000 per annum. Forty staff were to be moved to the office, 20 have moved to date. The head office remains in Dublin and it is not thought likely that it will move.
Mr Buckley in his report said Fás entered a €1 million contract for the fit-out of the building in December 2006. “Only one firm, the landlord’s building company, was asked to provide quotes for the fit-out contract.”
Mr Buckley used a 10-year timeframe to write off the fit-out costs and thereby calculated the annual cost of the lease at just over €200,000 per annum. This is “77 per cent higher than the upper benchmark for leased offices in that area” worked out by his office for the 2004-2008 period.
The members of the consortium are listed in a filing to the Land Registry in relation to the site. They are: Brendan and Maeve Garry, the Maltings, Birr; Séamus Pierce, Birr; Charlie and Ann Phelan, Kilkenny; Peter Fox, Birr; Leslie Moynan, Kilkenny; Thomas O’Connor, Kilkenny; and Pascal and Eleanor Campbell, Birr. The same people are members of the Birr Co-Ownership Group, which is based at the offices of O’Neill Foley accountants, Patrick Street, Kilkenny, the firm that acts for the Birr Technology Consortium.
A spokesman for the firm said the members of the consortium did not want to comment.
Mr and Ms Garry are directors of the Birr Building Company Ltd and other companies based in the Co Offaly town. Mr Pierce is a former director of Birr Advance Factory Nominee Co Ltd, now dissolved, and a former director of O’Carroll Consultants. He is described as a bank manager in company filings.
Mr and Ms Phelan’s occupations are not known. Mr Fox is the owner of Peter Fox Pharmacy, Birr. Mr Moynan and Mr O’Connor are directors of O’Neill Foley, an unlimited company at the accountancy firm’s offices. Mr and Ms Campbell are former directors of Birr Meat Processors Ltd.
The Birr Technology Centre was built as a public private partnership project between the consortium and Shannon Development Authority, which owns the site. The authority’s accounts show an interest-bearing loan of €2.5 million issued in relation to the project and state the authority has a right to purchase the centre at a fixed price in 2015.
The decision to build the centre was announced by Brian Cowen, then a local TD, in April 2000. At the time he was minister for foreign affairs.
The then tánaiste and minister for enterprise Mary Harney opened the centre in 2003. She said it had cost €3.8 million. The development qualified for urban renewal scheme tax breaks.
During the 2007 general election campaign, the then local Progressive Democrat TD and minister of State with the OPW, Tom Parlon, visited the offices and met with the then director general of Fás, Rody Molloy, who comes from near Birr.
Mr Parlon said at the time that decentralisation was happening but at a slower pace that envisaged by former the former minister for finance, Charlie McCreevy, according to a contemporary report in the Offaly Express.
