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He's back!: Johnny Ronan, property and the Celtic Tiger

One of Ireland’s most well-known property developers has exited Nama.

File Phone Johnny Ronan exits NAMA today. Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland

PROPERTY DEVELOPER JOHNNY Ronan has exited Nama after paying off liabilities totalling €3oo million.

A statement issued on behalf of Ronan says that one of the Celtic Tiger’s most well-known developers is to make a “full and committed return to building high quality developments in Ireland and abroad”.

The statement was drafted by Ronan’s business partner Guy Leech, who arranged the €300 million deal that allowed Ronan leave Nama.

The payment to Nama follows investment from US firm Colony Capital and from UK based M&G Investments.

This financing was secured on the back of 24 Dublin properties owned by the Ronan Group Real Estate.

10859942243_3c26d2b6fa_k Johnny Ronan's Treasury Holdings was behind the Convention Centre Dublin Flickr / PhotoNua Flickr / PhotoNua / PhotoNua

Johnny Ronan, property and the Celtic Tiger

Johnny Ronan is synonymous with the building boom that surrounded the Celtic Tiger in the decade before 2008.

His fingerprints can be seen on some of Dublin’s most prominent buildings built during that time, including the Convention Centre Dublin and Google’s high-rise HQ on Barrow Street.

Criticism

However, his excesses and partying often drew the criticism that now clings to property developers, and is used a way of criticising their ilk.

His relationship and subsequent breakup with model Glenda Gilson, and even stories of Ronan jetting to Morocco with former Miss World Rosanna Davison, all fuelled interest in him.

Since that period, his financial travails with the State’s bad bank similarly echoed the collapse of the Irish property market.

But today’s announcement that he has settled his loans with the Nama, and by extension repaid the exchequer, could perhaps go on to demonstrate the return to the fold of large-scale construction projects in Ireland.

Time will tell to what extent he’s involved, but today’s statement predicted he’s hoping to be a big player again.

“Ireland needs more quality housing and office development and the Ronan Group will meet that need.”

File Phone Johnny Ronan exits NAMA today. Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland

Read: The High Court said that Bewley’s rent should fall. The Supreme Court will today hear an appeal >

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112 Comments
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    Mute joe moody
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    Dec 30th 2024, 6:12 AM

    Colonial imperialist terrorists doing what they do!

    194
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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 8:57 AM

    @joe moody: Protecting people from terrorists that planted bombs in Shops , Pubs , Restaurants, Hotels . They didn’t care who they killed .

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    Mute North Phone Bowe
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    Dec 30th 2024, 9:40 AM

    @Jack Moss: Balkymurphy massacre, Derry Bloody Sunday hasn’t really covered your comrades in arms in Glory. Don’t try to come here and claim some sort of moral high ground while defending British forces in Ireland or rest of world. Your national is currently supplying the means of genocide in Palestine.

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    Mute Bru
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    Dec 30th 2024, 10:30 AM

    @Jack Moss: how is that protecting people? It could’ve damaged the peace process and cost people their lives

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 11:12 AM

    @North Phone Bowe: Your hero McGuinness and his Derry brigade murdered 51 innocent from the Derry area . 28 of them Catholics . People like Catholic teen Kathleen Feeney shot through the head by the IRA . Spares us your crocodile tears for those killed on Bloody Sunday .

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    Mute Pork Hunt
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    Dec 30th 2024, 12:44 PM

    @Jack Moss: shankill butchers , loyalist collusion…etc etc.. U LOL crew only see one side always and it’s orange

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    Mute honey badger
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    Dec 30th 2024, 12:52 PM

    @Pork Hunt: Nobody defends/ justifies the murders committed by loyalist terrorists though. It’s only Provo supporters who seem to forget that the Provos murdered more Catholics than the British Army during the Troubles. Revisionism is good business these days. I don’t forget the poll carried out at the end of the Troubles that showed both Catholics and Protestants in the high 80s% say there was no justification for the terrorism committed in their name.

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    Mute Soundy Sound
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    Dec 30th 2024, 1:08 PM

    @honey badger: it’s not surprising to see you in support of a brutal apartheid occupying force.
    Both the IRA and Hamas have done heinous things, for sure but both of them are a result of unjust suppression and disenfranchisement of people, illegally. Neither of them grew in a vacuum.
    If you brutally push people down, they will rise up with whatever means they have at their disposal. I’ve no doubt that Palestinians would love to face Israel down with a conventional army but Israel has seen to it that that can’t happen. You reap what you sow.

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    Mute honey badger
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    Dec 30th 2024, 1:20 PM

    @Soundy Sound: Lovely word salad and whataboutery. What “unjust suppression, disenfranchisement, illegally” were the Catholic victims of their supposed defenders guilty of? Strangely, Israel/ Hamas has/ had zero to do with it.

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 1:42 PM

    @Pork Hunt: The Shankill butchers murder 9 Protestants .

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 3:13 PM

    @Soundy Sound: They didn’t rising up . The majority of Catholics were supporting non violent organisations like the civil rights movement and John Humes SDLP . The IRA did not represent the Catholic population of NI . The 26 counties was a 98 percent RC state. It political system was made up of Republican parties . 40 thousand Protestant fled the 26 counties from intimidation and murder during the war of independence. The Protestant population fell to 3 percent. All this is long forgotten. Ireland was not partition in 1921 . The UK was partition . Irish Nats gain 26 counties the UK lost 26 counties. The UK people and unionists just accepted it and move on . Violence has always been the first choice for republican organisations . They always see themselves as the victims in history.

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    Mute Soundy Sound
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    Dec 30th 2024, 3:27 PM

    @honey badger: There is literally no point in arguing with someone who’s starting point is claiming that the nationalist population in Northern Ireland were not discriminated against by the ruling system.

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    Mute Alan Roddy
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    Dec 30th 2024, 3:51 PM

    @Jack Moss: protected nobody, and in this instance, actively pushed propaganda that could have caused serious damage to a fragile peace process.

    Actual state-sponsored terrorism from so called “security forces”

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 4:20 PM

    @Alan Roddy: The security forces had a 99 percent arresting rate . Over 25000 republicans were arrested and prosecuted for terrorism and criminality . Less then 200 were killed by the security forces over 25 yrs of the troubles . 3500 people were killed almost half of those were the security forces . In 69 NI was facing an all out civil war . The only thing that stop it going over the edge was the security forces . Over a 100 thousand people died in the three yr civil war in Bosnia . 3500 died in 26 yrs in NI . If it wasn’t for the security forces and emergency services nurses , doctors , paramedics, fire fighters that all stood in the face of terrorism the IRA would have succeeded in murdering tens of thousands more .

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    Mute honey badger
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    Dec 30th 2024, 4:38 PM

    @Soundy Sound: What you mean to say is you can’t comfortably justify why the Provos murdered more Catholics than the British Army. The only place you heard there was no discrimination was in your own head. It’s an odd thing to throw out there. Discrimination was so bad that the provos had to kill more of their own people than the British Army.

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    Mute Uí Braonáin
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    Dec 30th 2024, 11:15 AM

    RUC might’ve changed their name, but didn’t change their anti-Irish senior personnel.

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 11:53 AM

    @Uí Braonáin: If I remember rightly if you got a train from Dublin to Belfast the train was often stop before crossing the border on the recommendation from the RUC north of the border . People were put onto buses for their own safety to travel the rest of the journey because the IRA was constantly blowing up the rail line . They blew it 26 times in six months . Trains carrying people from the south came within minutes of being derailed .

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    Mute Kevin O Brien
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    Dec 30th 2024, 10:35 AM

    British spy planes hover over Gaza daily passing information to Israel on which tent full of innocent defenceless women and children to blow up next

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    Mute Gary Kearney
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    Dec 30th 2024, 11:05 AM

    @Kevin O Brien: Are these the same spy planes that are collecting evidence of war crimes etc?

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    Mute Super241946
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    Dec 30th 2024, 11:40 AM

    @Kevin O Brien: Ah! Come on now Kevin!!

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    Mute MN
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    Dec 30th 2024, 12:45 PM

    @Gary Kearney: Same accuracy

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    Mute Pork Hunt
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    Dec 30th 2024, 12:47 PM

    Any article on the cop saying no iPas are unvetted , which he clarifies as fingerprinted as identified. Kids in transition year get more vetting for work experience. No comment from the cop on forced deportation , it’s just part of the process. What a joke.

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 12:00 PM

    It was a common tactic of the IRA to leave secondary devices to kill the people that attempted to help the injured . The Claudy bombings consisted of three car bombs left on a public street. Car bomb two and three were timed to go off a few minutes after the first bomb detonated . There purpose was to kill the people that ran out onto the street to help the injured of the first bomb . 9 died 6 of them Catholic .

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    Mute Daniel Roche
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    Dec 30th 2024, 12:32 PM

    @Jack Moss: Why do you keep bringing religion into it.

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    Mute Jack Moss
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    Dec 30th 2024, 1:45 PM

    @Daniel Roche: People are living in some fairytale land that the IRA were defenders of Catholics which is untrue.

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    Mute H Woo
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    Dec 30th 2024, 4:54 PM

    @Jack Moss:
    SF RA did not give a dam about the Irish. It was all about a one Island communist sithole state.

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    Mute Róisín Guffpuffin
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    Dec 30th 2024, 1:17 PM

    Pikes in the Thatch.

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    Mute H Woo
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    Dec 30th 2024, 4:52 PM

    @Róisín Guffpuffin:
    Pub in Rathkeel??

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