The fall of Troy: How Robert Troy's brazenness contributed to his downfall
Robert Troy resigned as minister of state for trade regulation, despite being supported by Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins
It all started innocuously enough. Political scandals often do. But at the same time, the roots of Robert Troy’s ministerial resignation were there to be seen from the beginning.
At the beginning of this month, online investigative outfit asked Mr Troy about his rental of a property at Rathdown Rd in Dublin 7 for €650 more than the rate for the Housing Assistance Payment in the area.
The minister did not respond. Such consistent recalcitrance would ultimately play a significant role in his political demise. It was August 4, and silly season — that time of year with the Dáil on hiatus when stories are harder to come by for journalists — was in full swing.
Six days later, separately pressed Mr Troy for information regarding his former rental property at Ashefield in Mullingar — specifically why neither his ownership of it nor its sale for €40,000 more than the going rate to Westmeath County Council in 2018 was not to be found on the minister’s register of interests for that year. There was no response.
The following day, Mr Troy appeared by phone on RTÉ’s show with Philip Boucher Hayes to discuss the Ashefield sale. He admitted an “error” on his behalf in not declaring his ownership of the house, saying he had been “mistakenly under the impression” that houses not in one’s possession at year end did not need to be declared, and adding he was to “amend” said error forthwith.
One thing he dug his heels in on however was the suggestion that he was obliged to declare the sale of Ashefield to the local authority. Under Standards In Public Office Commission (Sipo) rules, TDs have to declare any ‘contracts’ with public bodies worth more than €6,500.
Mr Troy would subsequently suggest that Sipo had told him house sales to a county council do not count on that score, as a house is neither a ‘good’ nor a ‘service’.
Most crucially, Mr Troy finished that interview without offering any further information about other similar deals.
That would come back to bite him as the story began to ramp up with a vengeance. Mr Troy’s voice would not be heard on the airwaves again for 12 days, by which time he was fighting for his ministerial career.
On August 15, it emerged that the minister had repeated his trick of selling a house to a local authority, at Ash Lawns in Longford town on this occasion, without declaring either its ownership or the sale itself.
Other facets of the 2019 sale were troubling, given Ireland’s current all-consuming housing crisis. Mr Troy had bought the property for €82,500 from a Westmeath councillor Bill Collentine, and ‘flipped’ — refurbished and sold at a profit — it less than three months later for €163,000.
In reply to queries on the matter from the , Mr Troy acknowledged the error and said once more that he had “misinterpreted the requirements” for registering assets and would be amending same in due course.
This time however, he offered up a further property for the list of non-declarations, at Oakcrest in Mullingar, which he said, following a self-administered review of his own historic declarations, should have been declared in 2020, the year he sold it.
The Ashefield sale continued to dog the minister, after reported its tenant’s claim that Mr Troy had insisted on rental payments in cash. Days later he disputed this story, saying that cash had only been paid as the tenant’s father was wary of electronic transfers due to a bad experience with a previous landlord.
It was around now that the minister began ignoring requests for media comment for lengthy periods of time, perhaps in an attempt to control the narrative.
On Wednesday, August 17, revealed yet another anomaly in Mr Troy’s declarations of interest — this time that he had failed to declare in 2021 his directorship of RMT Management, a property management company.
Meanwhile, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy — the first and most consistent politician to speak out regarding Mr Troy's series of administrative gaffes — lodged a complaint with Sipo regarding the undeclared assets.
The following day, the queried Mr Troy about a property he had for years declared on his returns, at Cathedral View in Mullingar, due to there being no apparent record of a tenancy at the address being registered with the Residential Tenancies Board — a legal requirement.
That query was never answered. That afternoon, Mr Troy unleashed one of the most extraordinary official political statements seen in recent times. In it, he acknowledged seven separate mistakes on his historic declarations, and, in the interests of “full transparency”, added another eight revelations for good measure.
They included the fact his name is not registered as co-owner of the Cathedral View property (“clearly an error”), that he has two rental accommodation scheme (RAS) deals with Westmeath County Council, and crucially that his former family home at Ballynacargy Post Office near Mullingar has been privately rented since last year.
If the goal had been to kill the story, the lengthy statement instead saw various media outlets attack it en masse.
On the Friday, the Cathedral View property suddenly appeared on the RTB’s register — four times, in fact. However, Mr Troy’s voluntary disclosure that the post office property was being rented was now a problem, as that tenancy did not appear to have been registered either.
Some 31 hours after being asked for comment regarding Cathedral View, Mr Troy replied to this reporter with a registration number for the post office — one date stamped 0822, indicating it had only been registered this month.
The minister did not specifically acknowledge that fact until the following Monday, when he also finally gave details of the two RAS contracts he held with Westmeath County Council, four days after first being asked for them.
By then, notwithstanding repeat endorsements for the minister by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, the pressure from both the media and — belatedly — the Opposition in the Dáil had built to a crescendo, with further stories showing that Mr Troy had spoken in the past in favour of RAS expansions in the Dáil without acknowledging his own benefit from the scheme.
With more revelations likely in the offing, he took — or was encouraged to take — the fateful decision to appear on RTÉ Radio in a 20-minute interview with Brian Dobson.
Had he been more responsive over the previous two weeks, that appearance might have been enough to save him. As it was, it was too little too late, and his revelation on air that he owns 11 properties, including nine rentals, effectively sealed his fate.
Sounding alternately remorseful and belligerent, Mr Troy repeatedly apologised for his poor “due diligence”, but also railed against his perceived persecution at the hands of the media.
On the following day, Environment Minister Eamon Ryan called for two investigations into Mr Troy's conduct, something that immediately rendered his Coalition colleague's position untenable.
A little over 24 hours later it was all over, with the Taoiseach accepting both Mr Troy’s resignation and ownership of a political headache that Fianna Fáil could do without — who to appoint in his stead.
If Mr Troy had learned anything from his experience, his parting statement, in which he complained of the “vilification” of landlords and his pride at having first bought a house as a school leaver aged 20, wasn’t giving it away.
His colleagues have expressed qualified sympathy — he is by all accounts “a decent and popular guy and was a good minister” in the words of one — but the same TD also acknowledged that Mr Troy’s fate was largely self-inflicted.
“He messed up in a big way. The more details that came out, the end was inevitable.”
Robert Troy’s asset declarations may have been found wanting in recent days, but the Westmeath/Longford TD is far from the only landlord in Dáil Éireann — and the trend runs across the party divide, writes .
In fact, nearly half of the elected representatives in the Dáil are landlords or landowners, with 48 of them holding rental properties.
Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest landlords in the national parliament:
The Kerry independent has an extensive property portfolio across his native county, including at least 18 residences for letting – including farm dwellings, houses, and student accommodation.
The Sinn Féin representative for Meath has four properties listed as rentals on his register of interests – one each in Oldcastle in Meath and Tuam in Galway, and two houses in Edgeworthstown in Longford.
The Fine Gael TD for Wexford, who is both a former chief whip and Minister for Defence, is also officially a landlord per the Dáil register, with two apartments rented in Enniscorthy in his native county, and another on Haddington Road in leafy Dublin 2.
The veteran Dublin TD is one of the richest in the Dáil, with a personal worth of just under €5m. He’s also a sometime landlord, with two duplexes rented at Portmarnock and Kinsealy in the north of the county.
Fianna Fáil’s Minister for Agriculture receives rental income from an apartment at Ashtown in Dublin 15.
The Fianna Fáil TD for Cork North West holds extensive farmland in Mallow. He also receives rental income from a rented house, also in Mallow, and a one third share of another house on Percival Street in Kanturk.
The Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil is also a sometime landlord, receiving rent from a house at Fennor in Co Kildare.
The former Fine Gael TD and current independent rents a house on the old Golf Links Road in Blackrock, south of Dundalk in Co Louth.
The former Sinn Féin TD rents a two-bed cottage which she co-owns with her husband near Birr in her native Offaly.
The Galway independent, formerly a member of Shane Ross’s Independent Alliance, lets out four properties in the county – three of them in Tuam and one in Galway City.
Fine Gael’s TD for Cork North West, a former Minister for Agriculture, rents out four apartments and a cottage, all in Macroom, together with a commercial letting in the same town.
The Fianna Fáil Minister for Health has two rentals – an apartment in Sandyford in south Dublin and a house in Clara, Co Offaly.
The former Labour leader and TD for Tipperary occasionally rents out his holiday home at Ballinskelligs in Kerry.
Fianna Fáil’s chair of the Justice committee is also a barrister and the landlord for a residential property at Sallins in his native Kildare.
The Green Party’s TD for Limerick rents out a property at Fernhill on the North Circular Road in the city.
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