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LAST UPDATE | 7 Mar
JUST OVER ONE week ago, as many people were clocking off work, an agent acting for a landlord went door-to-door bearing “bad news” in a housing estate in south county Wexford.
Tenants in some 36 households in Hazelwood estate in the village of Bridgetown were plunged into uncertainty as they learned they would be facing eviction by their landlord, a firm called Patchflow Ltd.
A video leaked from a tenant’s doorbell camera this week showed an agent – working for landlord Martin Sinnott – claiming that they were serving eviction notices because of the government’s new rental rules. In the clip, the agent claimed the new rules are “very unfavourable to the landlord so we think it’s better just to sell up and get out”.
But who is Sinnott and how big is his company Patchflow Ltd?
Figures for Patchflow from their 2024 accounts, the latest to be filed, show that the company made a €300,000 profit and held assets valued at about €3 million.
But the financial picture is rosier for Sinnott when you look at the wider network that he and his wife Leonie Grant maintain. Between them, they hold directorships in some 20 companies.
These companies – covering housing, construction and a pharmacy chain – sit within a parent group called LG Investment Holdings DAC.
Overall in 2024 the group made a profit of €13,485,158 – up €3 million on the year before.
The 2024 report outlined the breadth of the group’s operations:
“The company and its subsidiaries operate across a number of different business sectors which include the operation of retail pharmacies in the Leinster region, the provision of construction services and the rental of commercial and residential properties.”
Its total assets – that is, properties and land holdings – by the end of 2024 were just shy of €121 million, up significantly on the €110 million from a year earlier.
They’ve also expanded into the UK, getting “prime commercial property” which is “expected to be the first of a number of property acquisitions in the UK market”.
The accounts show the group outlined that it “continued to improve performance in recent years”, with new pharmacies opened in Carlow and Dublin.
“The directors are continually looking for and assessing opportunities to expand the group’s operations, activities and property portfolios,” the report said.
One of Sinnott’s companies, construction firm Juice Development – which is responsible for a number of commercial property and housing projects in Wexford – made a profit of €3.3 million in the same year. This is included in the €13 million profit the wider group made.
Another of the family’s property companies, LHM Property Investments, previously owned some of the same properties in Bridgetown which are now overseen by Patchflow. The 2024 accounts show it made an €837,000 profit and held assets worth €10 million.
In a sector where much is made of so-called ‘mom-and-pop landlords’ or the international institutional investor, the past week’s events have put a spotlight on the actions of other major property holders in the rental sector.
The choices these landlords make will be critical to whether the government’s much-touted rental reforms actually bear fruit, or plummet more households into uncertainty.
Senior government ministers have long maintained that the country needs not just smaller landlords but also larger ones who provide a significant amount of housing in the country’s rental sector.
But their activities also underscore the multi-million euro industry that has taken hold in Ireland, and how businesses here are making vast sums of money during the housing crisis.
Under the government’s new rules, Patchflow is considered a large landlord – these are defined as having four or more properties.
According to TDs, the government needs to reckon with the different types of landlords already operating in Ireland’s private rental sector.
Labour TD for Wexford George Lawlor told The Journal that Patchflow had acted with tenants as if it was “a small-time landlord rather than being part of a multimillion-euro enterprise”.
Lawlor added that this is something the government “needs to tackle” in its efforts to manage the rental market.
“We have to stop regarding housing as a commodity. Of course we need private investment but we don’t need them controlling the rental market,” Lawlor said.
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) was examining whether the eviction notices are valid, but on Friday the landlord Patchflow Ltd announced it was withdrawing the notices.
Sinn Féin’s spokesperson for housing Eoin Ó Broin told us that greater oversight is needed in the sector.
He pointed to data showing that around half of the private rental market is owned by landlords that have four properties or more.
“As the small or accidental and semi-professional landlord has been shrinking in the sector, there has been a growth both in the medium sized landlord and the large landlord,” the Dublin TD said.
In the Dáil this week, when asked about the case, Tánaiste Simon Harris told Lawlor that rental laws “need to be complied with by landlords” and that “existing tenancies must be respected”.
The Journal attempted to contact Sinnott for comment via the email address of a company directed by him and Grant this week, but no comment was received by the time of publication.
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