‘He’s come out smelling of roses’: The truth behind family running Ireland’s newest car rental firm operating near Cork, Shannon and Dublin Airports, how they’ve left millions in debt… and their VERY powerful nemesis

The owners of one of Ireland’s newest car rental firms have left millions in debts behind them in previous businesses, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Easirent.ie, which operates from depots outside the perimeters of Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports, is owned by the UK-based Hanley family. It was first registered as a business name in Ireland in 2023.

The Swords-based company behind the Irish operation – ER Travel Ltd – now has retained earnings of €3.3million and runs a fleet of cars worth more than €6m.

However, previous firms run by the majority owners of the business – Nick Hanley and his son Paul Jon – have left millions in debts to companies behind them in the UK.

Their use of the Easirent brand has also ignited the ire of a powerful nemesis in billionaire easyJet founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

Easirent’s Nick Hanley’s has family connections through his father to Kenmare, Co Kerry

Easirent’s Irish operation is run by Nick Hanley’s son, Paul Jon Hanley. Easirent.ie was first registered as a business name in Ireland in 2023.

The founder of the Easirent business is 75-year-old Nick Hanley, from Wigan, whose family originally hails from Kenmare in Co. Kerry. Today, the Irish operation is run by Nick’s son Paul Jon, 46.

The Irish business is the latest in a string of car rental firms that the Hanleys have run since 1999. 

Although the Hanleys committed no wrongdoing, most of these firms have collapsed leaving behind millions in unpaid debts.

These debts include more than £2.6m (€3m) owed to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and another £2m-plus owed to other creditors. 

Despite these business failures, the Hanley family has always been able to keep its Easirent brand and begin trading afresh immediately via new companies.

Nick Hanley and his wife Kate. Nick’s mother Rita was from the famous Italian Cassinelli family who ran the 100-bed hotel and live music venue, the Casinelli Motor Inn just outside Wigan 

Nick Hanley set up his first vehicle rental business – Standish Self Drive – in 1987 with two second-hand Ford Transit vans.

Initially, the business – run via a UK-registered company called Beachmore PLC – was successful.

In January 1998, Nick Hanley posed for local newspapers as he signed a £10m deal for 1,000 new cars.

By 1999, Standish Self Hire had a turnover of £16m, 300 staff and a fleet of more than 5,000 vehicles, operating from 23 depots across the UK. But later that year, just before Christmas, the business went into administration with debts of £14m.

Unable to rescue the firm, Mr Hanley then began a new car hire firm called Easirent – something he was able to do because he owned nine of the depots used for the original business in his own name.

Mr Hanley was legally entitled to start again and he did not engage in any wrongdoing at all but this instant, phoenix-like resurrection angered creditors and those who lost their jobs at Christmas, making front page news locally.

‘I think Nick Hanley has come out of this smelling of roses while we face a bleak Christmas,’ one of those who lost their jobs told the Manchester Evening News.

 ‘Anger as crashed car firm boss starts again’ was the headline above the story. Mr Hanley told the paper: ‘People may be angry that I’ve started again but you can’t just sit back and say, ‘I’m washed up.’

Those owed money also expressed their frustration.

‘It galls us that while we have to absorb this debt, Nick Hanley has started afresh without a care in the world,’ one creditor owed £9,000 told the Wigan Evening Post.

 Nick Hanley said the 250 vehicles used for the new Easirent business had originally been leased to Standish Self Drive in his own name, and if he didn’t use them in a new business, he would have to find £2m to pay for them.

At the time, Mr Hanley told the Wigan Observer and District Advertiser newspaper: ‘We are doing very well and we are very busy picking up a lot of Standish Self Drive’s old customers. The clock is rolling back. It’s just like old times.’

In the article, he spoke of opening new branches where his old firm used to be based and being able to re-employ up to 30 former staff. 

He later complained about the tone of the reporting of his first business failure in a letter to the Wigan Observer. 

He wrote: ‘When times were tough, I was always first to manage without wages for up to 12 months at a time to ensure survival. All profits were ploughed back into the company and we employed 300 people, all well paid and treated like family.’

Mr Hanley’s letter said the collapse of his firm was due to factors outside his control linked to the collapse in second-hand car prices.

‘We gave everything we had to save our company – all our savings, all our pension money and every hour God sent to try and make it work,’ the letter said. 

‘For suppliers to suggest I have ditched one company and merrily started another is ludicrous – I have lost a lifetime’s savings and I have been saddled with substantial debt from the finance companies for which I am personally liable.

‘Standish was my pride and joy and losing such a company has been devastating to me and my family. It is like a bereavement. There are very few successful people in this country who have not sailed very close to the edge at some time or other and they can understand the situation.’

While it traded as Easirent, Mr Hanley’s new business was run via a new company called Penfold Ltd, which he had just incorporated.

Initially, the new firm did well but history was to repeat itself. A decade later, in November 2009, Penfold Ltd also went bust and administrators were appointed.

It owed HMRC £1,225,000 of unpaid VAT, PAYE and National Insurance Contributions (NIC). But in a pre-packaged deal, Mr Hanley was able to buy back the business, without its debts, for £245,000, payable in instalments over 10 months.

This was possible because HMRC was not by law treated as a preferential creditor, as it is now. Debt free again, Mr Hanley resumed trading as Easirent via a new firm called Penfold Fleet Ltd. 

Explaining the decision to sell back to a company controlled by Mr Hanley, the administrators said this was better for creditors than selling off assets piecemeal.

Administrators also said customer continuity would ‘maximise realisations from debtors’ while employment would be preserved.

Free from debt, Mr Hanley’s new firm was initially profitable. But by November 2011, had losses of £850,000 despite staff reductions and two depot closures.

According to the firm’s filed accounts, ‘the company fell behind in its obligations to HMRC’. The accounts state the company had ‘provided a bond in relation to VAT in the sum of £50,000’. But this was swallowed when arrears grew and HMRC sought another ‘£153,000 which the Company was unable to pay’.

In November 2011, the company asked for a ‘Time To Pay Arrangement’ with HMRC to deal with arrears but this was rejected. 

By March 2012, his latest firm was in administration and administrators agreed the best option for creditors was to sell it to a firm Mr Hanley controlled called Easiassist Ltd.

The price paid was £100,000 and it was agreed this could be paid in instalments of £10,000 a month.

On this occasion, HMRC was left out of pocket to the tune of £738,834. Easiassist changed its name in 2015 to ER Travel Services Ltd – but always traded using the Easirent brand.

Mr Hanley built the Easirent business back up again and soon had 2,800 vehicles, 252 staff and was generating annual revenue of £30m. 

But it was only marginally profitable until 2018 and in February 2020 was put into administration again by Barclay’s Bank, which was owed £809,000.

This time, debts to HMRC amounted to £655,690. The latest administration was blamed on factors including a ‘significant data handling fine in July 2018 from their merchant services provider’.

The use of the Easirent brand has ignited the ire of billionaire easyJet founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou who has been in legal dispute with the Hanleys since 2000

When asked by the MoS this week, Mr Hanley declined to specify what this fine relates to. 

Other issues blamed included unprofitable regional branches, a deflated second-hand car market and low-cost competition. 

The business was sold by the administrator to a firm controlled by Mr Hanley – this time called ER Capital Ltd.

The price was £1.28m, of which £450,000 was paid on the sale date with the balance due in 10 monthly instalments.

According to the administrator, this offer was the only one received from 18 parties contacted and ‘provided the best outcome for creditors in the circumstances’. Unsecured creditors owed £5m recovered 6.3 pence for every pound lost.

Meanwhile, Mr Hanley continued trading as Easirent, via ER Capital, until July 2021, when he sold the business to Leasys S.P.A., a European car leasing and hire firm owned by an Italian auto financing group.

The new owners did not trade under the Easirent brand, which Mr Hanley retained. Today, as well as being in Ireland, the Hanleys have expanded to the US.

Easirent is not a member of the Car Rental Council of Ireland (CRCI), an industry group that facilitates complaints and operates a code of practice for members.

In the US, Easirent is also not a member of the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a non-profit organisation that focuses on growing marketplace trust.

Asked about this by the MoS, Mr Hanley did not explain this decision. That hasn’t stopped hundreds of Easirent customers from logging complaints to the BBB.

In Ireland, review sites such as Tripadvisor and Trustpilot have logged hundreds of poor reviews of the hire company. 

This week the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) also confirmed it had received 16 helpline contacts about easirent.ie last year.

For operational reasons, the CCPC could not give details of ‘outcomes of complaint screening or ongoing investigations’.

Mr Hanley said the administrations and sales his companies had gone through ‘were lawful, independently supervised insolvency processes conducted by licensed insolvency practitioners acting in the interests of creditors’. 

He added that online complaints and reviews written about Easirent contained ‘unproven assertions, many of which are disputed, resolved, or anecdotal’.

Kerryman’s son who cut his teeth selling ice cream 

SUCCESS, Nick Hanley once told a local newspaper in Wigan, means an empty depot.

In the past he’s even spoken of being happy to rent out his own Mercedes and six-seater plane for profit.

Though his son, Paul Jon, 46, now runs his Irish and US businesses, Nick is still doing some renting. His beach-side apartment in Barbados is currently available on Airbnb for €2,849 weekly.

Hanley also has a charitable side.

In 1992, he led an aid convoy of his vehicles to Albania, accompanied by a BBC documentary crew. A pilot himself, Mr Hanley has in the past operated a helicopter from his back garden in Mawdesley in England’s north west.

Mr Hanley’s Irish family roots, via his father Ted, go back to Kenmare, Co. Kerry. His mother, Rita, was from the famous Italian Casinelli family, who ran sweet shops and sold ice cream in Wigan as far back as the 1890s.

As a boy, Nick Hanley cut his teeth selling Casinelli ice cream from a van and cut a deal with his father to keep all profits from sales after 5pm.

Later he managed the family’s 100-bed family hotel – the Casinelli Motor Inn in Standish – which was also an infamous live music venue in the 1970s.

When the hotel was sold in 1987, he purchased two second-hand vans to rent from the forecourt.

The rest is history.

Although Easirent has had a tumultuous past, Mr Hanley has other business interests that generate millions in profits.

These include a 50 per cent stake in companies called Auto Network (GB) Ltd and Theleadagency.com Ltd, run by his son Anton.

These two companies make money by generating internet leads to prospective car purchasers for car dealers.

The Hanley family has also suffered tragedy, with the untimely death of their son, Nicky (Jnr), in September 2000.

Aged 22, he fell six floors from a hotel in Ibiza in a drug-fuelled accident that saw Mr Hanley criticise the safety standards of the holiday operator.

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Easyjet tycoon chasing Hanley for quarter of a century

BILLIONAIRE Easyjet tycoon Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou first issued proceedings in 2000 to stop the Hanley family from using the Easirent brand.

A quarter of a century later, the matter is still disputed, most recently with a case about the Hanleys’ use of brand name, Easihire. 

In 2024, lawyers acting for Easygroup made a futile complaint to the UK’s Insolvency Service, saying Nick and Paul Hanley should be disqualified as company directors. 

The latest row reached a zenith in December when Easygroup lost its trademark fight about the Easihire logo in the UK courts. 

The court ruled the use of the Easihire name by the Hanleys would have been a trademark infringement. 

But Easygroup lost on technical grounds because it had not used the name Easyhire in the five years prior to taking that case, except for a three-month period online after it launched the case. 

But Easygroup succeeded in having the Hanleys’ dissolved UK firm, ER Travel Ltd, reinstated last year and then put back into administration by buying the debt of a former ER Travel creditor even though the company had been dissolved.

Then Easygroup went to court to temporarily reinstate the firm so as to query the transfer of the Easirent trademark to the Hanleys’ new firm in the previous insolvency. 

The UK High Court has now ruled that this transfer should be investigated by new administrators of the once dissolved firm.