The controversial landlord Marc Godart is a shareholder in a company that was granted permission to build 13 houses and 40 apartments on a site in Blackpool, Cork City, which has since been sold.
The planning permission was granted by An Bord Pleanála in August 2022, having earlier been refused by Cork City Council. The site has since been sold, and is now owned by a Co Meath-based construction company unassociated with the businessman. It is not known how much was paid for the site. A request for a comment from Mr Godart met no response.
Mr Godart, who is from Luxembourg, invested in Irish property during the property downturn by way of a number of Irish companies that are in turned owned by a holding company in Luxembourg called Hesper SA.
He has been involved in the letting of commercial and residential property, and has been the subject of a number of negative findings by tribunals of the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) in relation to illegal evictions.
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His companies have also been before the District Court in Dublin on a number of occasions in relation to fire safety issues and the unauthorised short-term letting of accommodation.
In July, a judge in the High Court made Mr Godart personally liable for 80 per cent of the legal costs of a woman, a former tenant, who took a case against Green Label Short Lets, Reuben House, Dublin 8, arising from her having been illegally evicted from her home in Dublin and not having been paid an award made in her favour by the RTB against the Godart company.
Mr Justice Brian Cregan said he was satisfied Mr Godart had “acted in bad faith and with impropriety from start to finish in the conduct of these proceedings”.
The planning permission in Cork, which has not been previously reported, was in relation to a site on Fairfield Road granted to a company called Dunluce Land Holdings Ltd, of Reuben House, Dublin 8, of which Mr Godart is a director along with two other directors with addresses in Luxembourg, Stephan Schmit and Marc-Jean-Pierre Peller.
The company was incorporated in 2017, and its latest filed accounts show it had fixed assets worth €1.3 million at the end of 2022. Earlier accounts show the company was loaned a similar amount by its shareholders, who are Hesper SA, Akof Participations, and Financière Schmit & Schmit, all of Luxembourg.
A consultancy company made a submission to the Cork City Development Plan in 2021 in relation to the site “in collaboration with Green Label Properties”. Green Label Property Investments Ltd, of Reuben House, Dublin 8, is one of Mr Godart’s Irish companies and had investment property worth €2.7 million at the end of 2022, according to its latest filed accounts.
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