Dermot Desmond backs Story of the Irish

Dermot Desmond, the globe-trotting financier and founder of Daon, has pitched up as an investor in a new live-action tourism exhibit in Dublin.

In July, we reported on the opening of Story of the Irish, a new attraction in Smithfield that charts 10,000 years of Irish history up to the modern day using exhibits and live performances.

The €1.5 million project, with backing from Bank of Ireland, was launched by Frank Fitzpatrick, a former university lecturer and one-time owner of a fashion design business.

He told us in the summer that he had previously pitched the idea to Desmond, who was interested, but that the financier “wasn’t an investor”. Fitzpatrick said he did, however, have an unnamed “private investor” due to come on board.

It turns out that, lo and behold, the private investor is indeed Desmond. Documents filed for the attraction’s holding company, Beyond the Gateway, reveal Desmond’s IIU Nominees lobbed in €350,000 for a stake of about 25 per cent on August 18th.

Meanwhile, Desmond’s massive new diamond mine project on the edge of the Arctic, at Gahcho Kue in the Canadian tundra, is now 70 per cent complete and on course for first production in the second half of next year.

Canadian bank RBC released a note this week in which it cut its price target in Mountain Province Diamonds, which owns almost a half of the mine, with Desmond owning about a quarter of MPD.

Diamond prices should recover, however, so it won’t be long before Desmond’s investment pays off.