OPW could have prevented Garda HQ mess 

One deal offered to the OPW in 2013 would have cost it roughly €45m — some €41m less than the €86.6m replacement it is building on this site at Military Rd in Kilmainham. Picture: Moya Nolan

The Office of Public Works missed out on at least three opportunities to prevent the loss of the garda command centre in Dublin to private interests by a failure to act, it has emerged.

The OPW, the State body with responsibility for property management, on at least three occasions declined to action an offer to either extend the rental lease on Garda HQ at Harcourt Square, or to buy the property outright at a discount, between 2010 and 2014, according to documents seen by the Irish Examiner.

An Garda Síochána is currently caught in a race against time to vacate the command centre by the end of 2022 or risk a heavy financial penalty falling due to its landlord, real estate investor Hibernia REIT.

OPW failed to take up deals 

The 30-year leases on the four blocks at Harcourt Square were first agreed in the early 1980s, and had been due to expire between 2014 and 2016.

In 2010 the property’s then landlord, the late property investor David Courtney, offered to extend the leases on the four blocks to a unified expiry date in 2020, at a rent of nearly €1m less per annum than the €4.9m which had previously been payable. That deal offer does not appear to have been responded to by the OPW.

In 2013, after Harcourt Square had passed into the hands of NAMA which planned to offload the loans on the buildings as part of the larger Project Aspen portfolio sale, the property valuation section of OPW was informed that the successful buyer would potentially be interested in selling the properties back to the OPW.

That ‘carve-out’ was estimated as being likely to cost roughly €45m — €41m less than the €86.6m replacement for Harcourt Square at Military Rd, Kilmainham, is budgeted for.

Behind-the-scenes communication between the OPW and an intermediary on the sale continued over the first four months of 2013, but the OPW never actioned the offer.

In early 2014, negotiations began between the successful bidder, American firm Starwood, and the OPW with a view to extending the Harcourt Square leases. Across several meetings, an offer of a ten-year lease extension to 2024 was proposed by Starwood at a reduced cost of €4.4m per annum. The OPW however held out for an extension of a maximum of five years in duration.

In early 2015 Starwood sold Harcourt Square to Hibernia without first notifying the OPW. Hibernia made it clear it wished to redevelop the site.

No response to queries from OPW 

The OPW did not respond to queries as to why none of the three opportunities, which would have prevented the current situation which sees the gardaí having to vacate their home of 40 years, were availed of.

Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy, a consistent critic of the Military Rd build, said that the “only conclusion” to be taken from the fact none of those three offers were availed of is that “nobody in the OPW could take a decision”: 

There appears to have been major missed opportunities here that have exposed the State to a much more costly scenario.

She said she could not understand how more urgency had not been shown at the time given the Harcourt Square leases had been due to expire.

“It was obvious that there was going to be a need to either secure another lease, or to buy the loans, and buying the building for me would have been the optimum,” she said.