Bourke in call to landlords

THE RESTAURATEUR and publican Jay Bourke has said landlords have to adjust their expectations when the businesses they are depending on for rent are under severe pressure.

He was speaking in the wake of the closure of his Café Bar Deli outlet in Ranelagh, Dublin. The landlords of the premises are understood to have been in the process of repossessing the building for the non-payment of rent when the outlet closed.

The landlords, Peter O’Gorman and Elizabeth O’Gorman, of Blackrock, Co Dublin, secured a judgment for €141,250 against Mr Bourke’s company, Sherland Entertainments, in July.

They also secured a judgment for €17,000 against Mr Bourke personally on the same date. Mr O’Gorman would not comment when contacted.

Mr Bourke confirmed the judgments arose from unpaid rent. He said the rent on the Ranelagh property was substantial even though the landlords had agreed a reduction. “If the customers stop coming through the door, we all have to adjust our expectations.”

He said his company had spent €1 million on refurbishing the building because it had believed it would be in the location for a long time. He said when the downturn came the first person to stop being paid was him. “The first cut was mine.”

Rents had quadrupled over the past decade and every tenant in Ireland was in difficulty, he said. Rents should come down by as great a percentage as the fall in the value of commercial property.

He said the two remaining Café Bar Deli outlets, in Dublin and Cork, were doing well given the economic environment. The Dublin outlet, on South Great George’s Street, is closed for renovations, he said.

Mr Bourke is a well-known business figure because of his involvement in the RTÉ TV series, The Mentor, and because of the high profile of some of his business outlets.

Last year he had a well-publicised dispute with the Temple Bar Cultural Trust over unpaid rent on the building used by his Eden restaurant in Temple Bar, Dublin. The matter had since been resolved between the two sides and the Eden business is doing well, he said.

The judgments secured by the O’Gormans are not the first against Mr Bourke or his companies. In December 2009 Rentokil Pest Control, Kildare, secured a judgment for €834 against Sherland in the District Court. A year earlier the Irish Music Rights Organisation, which represents the financial interests of musicians, secured a €36,164 judgment against the company.

The organisation secured a judgment for €11,599 against Southlinch Ltd, another of Mr Bourke’s companies, in November 2008 while it secured a judgment for €13,941 against Shebeen Shic Ltd, trading as Thomas House, in July of this year.

Another of Mr Bourke’s companies, Mercroft Taverns Ltd, had a judgment for €11,688 registered against it in December 2008 in favour of Lighthaus Ltd, a retail furniture and lighting business now in liquidation.

In April Bellinter House Ltd, owned by Mr Bourke and businessmen Simon Kelly and John Reynolds, went into voluntary liquidation. The company developed the luxury boutique hotel Bellinter House, Co Meath, and its owners were among its main creditors. The hotel remains open.

Mr Bourke said that four years ago his businesses employed almost a thousand people but now employed about 250. He said the fact that judgments had been registered against some of his businesses reflected the difficulties being faced by many small businesses.