A CITY-CENTRE hotel in Dublin that was once owned by Sean Quinn has gone up for sale for €22 million, one of several former Quinn properties in the capital that have gone on the market in recent times.
Buswells Hotel is being sold by liquidators for the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC). Located across from Leinster House, the 67-bedroom hotel has long been a popular watering hole for politicians, journalists and lobbyists.
Buswells isn’t the only property once owned by Mr Quinn to go on the market in Dublin.
Last month UFC star Conor McGregor failed in his bid to buy former Quinn-owned pub, JW Sweetman, on Dublin’s Burgh Quay.
Instead, the bar close to O’Connell Bridge is understood to have been bought by a publican family from Longford who own a chain or bars in New York. It has been reported the family paid €5.5 million for the JW Sweetman, more than €2 million more than the guide price of €3.25 million.
Another formerly Quinn-owned bar, The Barge on Charelmont Street, was put up for sale for €3.75 million back in May. Located along the Grand Canal, the bar has been described in the past as “on of Dublin’s best-known licensed premises.”
Both The Barge and JW Sweetman had previously been on offer in 2014 for a combined guide price of €5.5 million.
Earlier this year the Herald reported on how the iconic Quinn’s Pub in Drumcondra – once a popular watering hole for Fermanagh GAA fans – had been saved from demolition after a planning application to turn it into flats and shops was denied. The pub had been sold by the liquidators in 2019.
Buswells and the other two properties could not be sold by the IBRC – the body formed when Anglo Irish Bank merged with the Irish Nationwide Building Society – previously due to a legal dispute concerning Mr Quinn’s children. This was settled in 2019 after the family dropped its claims to the properties.
The IBRC took control of a number of properties formerly owned by Mr Quinn following his bankruptcy in 2011, and has been selling them in an attempt to recover some of his debt, which was reportedly in the region of £2.4 billion.
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