Former Dragon Niall O’Farrell, the entrepreneur behind the now-shuttered Blacktie tuxedo rental chain, is facing the loss of a substantial portion of his treasure after a judgment was registered against him by the Revenue Commissioners to the tune of €450,365.
O’Farrell, with an address on Anglesea Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, became a familiar face to the wider public as a potential angel investor in the first four seasons of Dragons’ Den on RTÉ.
The fortunes of the various Dragons were not especially buoyed by their investments in the public’s great ideas, and O’Farrell is no different, having shuttered Blacktie in 2013.
More recently, he had a judgment for €64,621 against him from Credebt Exchange, a short-term commercial finance company, in 2024.
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Things have certainly changed for the man who once had three runners at Cheltenham and two houses on Shrewsbury Road, one of Dublin’s most exclusive addresses.
From Mary Lavin to a lad pad and beyond
Writer Mary Lavin’s home at 11 Lad Lane – just metres from the recently inaugurated Mary Lavin Square near Dublin’s Grand Canal – has hit the market at an asking price of €1.395 million.
The house was described by The Irish Times in 2014 as a possible bachelor pad, as it is “a short weave home from Dublin’s best night spots and Aviva Stadium is only up the road”, but the buyers, who paid €700,000 at the time, have kept the bro aesthetic to a minimum at the literary shrine.
The mews was home to Lavin herself from 1958 to 1981, as she won a place in the pantheon of New Yorker-published short story writers in the competitive 1950s and 1960s, alongside Nabokov, Salinger and Roth. She lived there with her daughters, including the late Irish Times journalist Caroline Walsh.
She also entertained an anthology of 20th-century Irish writing in the Dublin version of Edna O’Brien’s famed Chelsea residence: Patrick Kavanagh (who fell asleep), John McGahern, Sean Ó Faoláin, Colm Tóibín, Maeve Binchy, Polly Devlin, Benedict Kiely, Elizabeth Bowen, Eavan Boland and Paul Durcan are among those mentioned.
Some of them evidently came with empty bellies – Lavin ultimately believed she “made too much soup for too many people”. Emulating her shouldn’t be too difficult for the buyer, however – it comes with appliances including an “American-style fridge/freezer, wine cooler, integrated dishwasher, a Cuisinemaster double oven and a five-burner gas hob”. All the prospective buyer needs is some literary friends.
A peek behind the Collison curtain
Further from the madding crowd, an opportunity arises to see how the other half live, at least when they’re on annual leave.
John Collison, the founder of payment platform Stripe alongside his brother Patrick, purchased Abbeyleix House and Estate in Co Laois for a figure over €11.5 million in 2021, providing himself with the use of 27,000sq ft and 1,000 acres of grounds when the hustle of San Francisco proves overwhelming.
Collison made his first million on software before doing his Leaving Cert, but he is to the manor born in some respects: he has continued the house’s tradition of hosting an open day for the local community including food stalls, crafts, an air show in keeping with Collison’s fascination for aviation – and a trail run for people who like to earn their leisure.
According to Forbes, Collison’s net worth is about $10.1 billion, which would cover the salary of the man once in line to be housing tsar Brendan McDonagh for 21,000 years. He has put his not insubstantial resources into restoration of the house, stewardship of its portion of rare ancient woodland and husbandry of animals, including the ever popular alpaca.
Early-bird tickets, on sale earlier this week, would have set a curious tourist back €15 to visit on June 29th – all proceeds to charity of course.
Declan Ganley’s Roman holiday
Focused on more heavenly matters is another Irish man, Declan Ganley, who has attracted attention as a funder of American conservative Catholic events in Rome, even as the faithful looked to the balcony of St Peter’s to see what way the church would turn in the wake of Francis.
The so-called “America week” took place during the nine-day period of mourning for the late pontiff, the New York Times reported, and gathered various influential American Catholic activists, including former Trump adviser Steve Cortes, and other conservatives including Margarita de la Pisa Carrión of Spain’s far-right Vox party.
Then there was the curious figure of Alexander Tschugguel, an Austrian man who shot to fame in certain circles after stealing statues allegedly depicting the South American earth goddess Pachamama, on display in a chapel during Francis’s outreach efforts to Amazonian peoples, and throwing them in the Tiber.
Ganley is noted as having funded a dinner reception and a ball alongside the Louis IX Foundation, named after the French leader of the unsuccessful seventh and eighth Crusades. After the dance, attendees “strategised or flirted over cigars and cocktails”, per the New York Times, “or went to night-time Eucharistic adoration at the Chiesa di San Gioacchino in the Prati neighbourhood”. No word on which Ganley, described as an “Irish businessman and prominent anti-abortion activist”, chose.
Sally Rooney in the home of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Irish influence also extends to the other side of the American political spectrum, however. The New Yorker magazine, in a photographic essay depicting the livingrooms of the city’s most powerful, snaps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx Congresswoman and hope of the left, knitting on her couch alongside her French bulldog Deco (and a portrait of the same dog). So far, so millennial. On the table in front of her? Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo.
The hardest job in the Dáil?
The Dáil bar is hiring, and it is far from a simple “help wanted” sign. The Oireachtas has supplied a 27-page information booklet for the role of “bar chargehand”, who must, of course, “be of good character” as well as “in a state of health such as would indicate a reasonable prospect of ability to render regular and efficient service”.
Central responsibilities include tasks such as “handling cash and card transactions”, “welcoming customers” and the vital “maintaining availability of cutlery and condiments”.
The pay, to begin, is €997.84 a week, but the full symphony of public service benefits apply, including access to the pension scheme, eye tests, the Cycle to Work scheme, financial support for professional development up to PhD level, a creche, a fitness room, a choir and the Oireachtas library.
Among the skills required are the ability to express oneself “in a clear and articulate manner”, to deal with tensions within the team “in a constructive fashion” and of course an ability to “accurately estimate time parameters for projects, making contingencies to overcome obstacles”. If you can do all that, you might make a minister.
