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Two units of Genesis Homes, a homebuilder controlled by former McInerney Holdings chief executive Barry O’Connor, have been placed in receivership after a repayment date was missed.

Bank of Ireland, which acts as security trustee on behalf of a unit of private equity group Cardinal Capital, had a receiver appointed to Genesis Homes (Mungret) and Genesis Homes earlier this month.

It’s thought that Genesis Homes (Mungret) was due to pay a sum totalling less than €500,000 to WLR Cardinal Mezzanine Finance on the last day of March. It’s believed Genesis had informed Cardinal that the payment would be missed by a matter of days.

Half the money is understood to have been repaid around the time the receiver – Tom Kavanagh of Deloitte – was appointed to the firms.

The remainder that was owed by Genesis Homes (Mungret) was understood to have been almost immediately made available to the Cardinal unit, but the sum was apparently rejected due to the receiver being in place.

However, it would be unusual that a lender would appoint a receiver if a payment was only going to be missed by a matter of days and especially if it was the first time a repayment deadline had been missed.

Mr O’Connor established Genesis Homes in late 2011. The Genesis Homes (Mungret) vehicle was used to develop residential properties in Limerick. That site had been previously owned by McInerney. Genesis also has development sites in Dublin and close to the capital.

The ‘Limerick Leader’ reported this week that the Sli Na Manach estate in Mungret was due to have about 200 homes, but that only half of those have been built to date. The newspaper reported that Cardinal became impatient with the speed of the project and pulled its support. The detached properties are being developed on a ‘buy-and-build’ basis.

One local councillor told the newspaper that a shortage of skilled labour in the region may have contributed to a slower development pace at the estate than might have been anticipated by the developers.

Earlier this month, Genesis Homes (Mungret) submitted a planning application to Limerick County Council to replace 34 homes previously permitted under an earlier planning permission with 21 houses.

Genesis Homes and Mr O’Connor declined to comment as did Cardinal Capital.

Based in Dublin, Cardinal Capital was established by Nigel Corcoran and Nick Corcoran. The WLR Cardinal Mezzanine vehicle is backed by Wall Street titan Wilbur Ross, who’s now the US Commerce Secretary.

Cardinal Capital helped to engineer a €1.1bn investment in Bank of Ireland in 2011 that was backed by Mr Ross, who made a massive return on the stake.

It has been preparing to build a 115-bed student residence in Stoneybatter in Dublin, on a site beside the new DIT Grangegorman campus, which will eventually accommodate 20,000 students.

Mr O’Connor took a €1m unfair dismissal claim against McInerney Holdings in 2011, arguing he’d been pressured out of his job there in 2010.

But the Employment Appeals Tribunal determined in 2014 that Mr O’Connor had not undertaken his case within the statutory time period of six months from the date of his dismissal in April 2010 and determined that he was therefore too late in bringing his claim.
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