McNamara 'will not stop council talking to bid rivals'

DEVELOPER BERNARD McNamara has told Dublin City Council that his company will not prevent the authority from opening talks with rival bidders for two inner city housing projects.

The council announced three weeks ago that Mr McNamara’s building firm and its partner, Castlethorn, had pulled out of an agreement to build five new housing schemes to replace existing local authority apartment blocks.

Mr McNamara, and his business, Michael McNamara and Company, subsequently said that they did not withdraw from the schemes. They said there were problems reaching agreement because the council had changed regulations concerning apartment size and energy use midway through the process.

At the weekend, Mr McNamara wrote to assistant city manager Ciarán McNamara (no relation) saying that the building company “will not stand in the way” if the council opens talks with rival bidders on two of the projects, St Michael’s and Dominic Street.

However, he adds that the council should undertake to apply exactly the same terms to the next bidder as it did to the McNamara group and its partner.

He wrote the letters in response to two from the assistant city manager acknowledging that the authority and the builder were unable to reach an agreement that would allow them to proceed with both projects.

They state that unless McNamara comes up with a “meaningful proposal” by 5pm next Wednesday, the council would approach rival bidders.

Mr McNamara replied with two letters, one on behalf of Michael McNamara, which was working on Dominick Street, the second for a subsidiary, Trimera Ltd, which was dealing with St Michael’s.

Both state that the decision to withdraw from talks with his companies and move to the next bidder is “entirely for Dublin City Council”. They point out that both companies met all deadlines set by Dublin City Council to submit designs, change those designs, makes presentations to interested parties and carry out a range of other tasks.

Mr McNamara’s companies were the “preferred bidders” on both projects. This meant that no actual agreement was in place, but instead that the council chose to open negotiations with the group on the basis of the proposals it made when the local authority put the projects out to tender.

All five projects are public-private partnerships. Under these agreements, the developers involved get a portion of the new homes they build in return for constructing the scheme as a whole.

The total number of new homes involved in the five projects is 1,800. Mr McNamara’s companies would have kept about 800 of these to sell on the open market.

The other schemes are Infirmary Road, O’Devaney Gardens and the Convent Grounds on Seán MacDermott Street. It is not clear who the other bidders on the two projects were, as a number of groups, including one led by Pierse Construction, tendered for them.