Man involved in buying €10.3m of unused covid ventilators for HSE lands K Club deal

Robert Quirke’s new company Eco Hydro was recently retained by the K Club golf resort in Kildare to “restore and improve” the facility’s existing hydroelectric generator which uses the flow of the adjacent River Liffey to provide power to the club. File photo: Julien Behal

The man behind a festival management company in dispute with the HSE over €10.3m worth of unused covid ventilators has landed a contract with a prestigious five-star golf resort.

Robert Quirke’s new company Eco Hydro was recently retained by the K Club golf resort in Kildare to “restore and improve” the facility’s existing hydroelectric generator which uses the flow of the adjacent River Liffey to provide power to the club.

Westmeath-born Quirke came to public attention when his company Roqu Media International — which had previously been involved in running music festivals in the Middle East and eastern Europe — received €14.1m from the HSE to procure 328 ventilators from China at the height of the pandemic.

However, just 72 ventilators were received, and the devices subsequently failed to pass the quality standards required for clinical deployment and were never used.

Roqu has been in dispute with the HSE over €10.3m paid to the company since May 2020. In total, €35m was in dispute between the HSE, Roqu and three other companies.

Asked if those disputes have been resolved, a HSE spokesperson said it “continues the process of taking the necessary steps to recoup outstanding amounts where appropriate and possible to do so”. They added that the HSE “will not comment on ongoing matters which are the subject of legal proceedings in certain instances”.

Mr Quirke did not reply to a request for comment. He has kept a relatively low profile over much of the past two years, while Roqu Media itself has not filed a return for any financial year since 2021.

Last March, Mr Quirke set up two new concerns — Quirke Renewable Systems Limited, and Eco Hydro Power, trading as Hydropower Engineering Limited.

Before Christmas, the K Club officially launched its refurbished hydroelectric generator, an event at which Mr Quirke was pictured with Finance Minister Jack Chambers.

When asked about the minister being photographed with a businessman involved in a long-running financial dispute with a State body, a spokesperson said he had been “not aware of Mr Quirke before the event, nor his involvement in any of the matters outlined”.

A spokesperson for the K Club, meanwhile, said that the new generator “is expected to cover about 70% of the hotel’s electrical needs”.

They said that the refurbishment project had “required a custom-built turbine” which had been carried out by an Austrian company, a process which had taken “about 12-18 months”. They did not divulge how much the project had cost.

Mr Quirke, who had previously declared himself as being resident in Malta, is now officially based in Lusk, north County Dublin, according to the most up-to-date filings for his two new renewable energy companies.

Defamation action

A defamation action taken by Mr Quirke against Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave was struck out on Wednesday at the High Court.

The action, first lodged in April 2021, was dismissed by the deputy master of the court, John Glennon, as Mr Quirke had not responded to attempts to contact him for over a year.

Mr Quirke had taken the defamation action against Mr Cosgrave on foot of a tweet posted by the Web Summit CEO in March 2021 — which alleged that Mr Quirke had spent “taxpayer cash on super cars” and then “fled” the country — stating that the post was clearly calculated to damage his reputation