The incredible story of the wild ride on the multi-million euro gravy train that is asylum accommodation provision by the owners of the humble Igo café is now well-known, thanks largely to the dogged and meticulous efforts of my colleague and friend, Matt Treacy, whose persistence in delving into company records and other vaults of information has largely enriched our knowledge of who is benefiting from this insanely lucrative sector.
As Matt detailed, Igo Emergency Management Services, has received more than €57 million from the Irish taxpayer for providing asylum services in the state – making them one of the biggest players in this lucrative sector.
The IGO Café on the Sallynoggin Road was registered as a business in October 2017 as jointly owned on a moderate shareholding of €50 each by Romanian national Cristina Andries with an address in Dún Laoghaire and Ann Murphy of Borriskane, County Tipperary. Both are still owners and have overseen a remarkable upturn in fortunes since the IGO Café “became involved with IGO Management Services” on June 1, 2022.
The little café began modestly and reported tangible assets of just €9,686 at the end of 2020. It described itself as involved in “restaurant and mobile food services” and employed just three people including one of the directors.
David Mooney was listed as owner of Igo EMS – established in September 2023 but in receipt of payments for asylum accommodation for asylum applicants and Ukrainians since 2022 – on an application for an asylum accommodation centre in Blanchardstown.
He was previously involved in a lap dancing venue, and ended up giving evidence which led to convictions for protection racketeers who were supposedly involved in the Continuity IRA, which led to him being placed in a Witness Protection Programme. A café associated with interesting characters then.
The involvement of Igo in the asylum SECTOR came to attention of Ballybrack activist Fergus Power before almost anyone else. He had proposals which would have seen place large numbers of migrants placed into local communities without consultation or consent.
Power was protesting outside the Igo café in Sallynoggin, holding an Irish Lives Matter poster, when he was confronted by a Sinn Féin activist named Shane O’Brien, an interaction which caused no end of excitement for those online who are committed to ‘fighting the fash’ – which mostly seems to involve punching down on working-class people and feeling free to call them “scumbags” and other classist insults which are still, it seems, perfectly acceptable amongst the same people who would have you hung drawn and quartered for ‘misgendering’ someone.
Most of those cheering on O’Brien were absolutely delighted when Gardaí arrested Power which is the desired outcome, apparently, for the anarchists fighting to demolish the evil capitalist state and all it’s apparatus. (These are either very stupid or very confused people. Or they know exactly what they’re doing, because they support the incredible accumulation of wealth in a very short time for those who see the opportunities in the asylum sector. There’s gold in them thar migrant centres.)
O’Brien, who won a council seat for Sinn Feín in Killiney-Shankill in 2014, but failed to be re-elected in 2019, was well primed to start hurtling accusations at Power. He didn’t address the main point being made by the protest – which was that Igo was involved in facilitating the imposition of centres for migrants on already-stretched communities.
It was peculiar to see a Sinn Féin candidate – surely a member of a party well accustomed to protest – hurling accusations at Power, accusing the Ballybrack man of being a ‘fascist and a liar’. But what Power was saying was true, and now another Matt – Sinn Féin’s leading light, Matt Carthy – has used his time in the Dáil and at Committe in recent weeks to belatedly raise the rags to riches tale of the Igo café and call for transparency.
It’s like a very bad joke really. Is Carthy now a fascist in the eyes of the party representative that attacked Power?
Sinn Féin spokesperson on Justice and Chairperson of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Matt Carthy TD, speaking following a meeting with the Minister for Justice on IPAS, has said that the government has a lot of work to do to end IPAS profiteering.
“A small number of people have become millionaires through a system that has clearly lacked checks and balances and for which there was no transparency or accountability. We have seen companies with no track record in the provision of accommodation that have moved into the business of providing IPAS accommodation see their profits skyrocket over a couple of years.
“The case of Igo café is illustrative of the absurdity of what has been taking place. In 2024 Igo (Café turned IPAS accommodation providers), one of the largest beneficiaries of state contracts, paid themselves €4.6mn in 2024. Three years earlier, this company made after tax profits of just €2,092.
So, according a Sinn Féin TD, Igo cafe is illustrative of IPAS “profiteering” and we need transparency and accountability about how the whole asylum caper is playing out? Isn’t that what Fergus Power was saying when he was confronted in Sallynoggin, and then hounded online by the Shinner bots?
Those bots, and the Shinners on the ground, have learned some lessons, of course, from two bad elections where they lost buckets of votes to ordinary people who were angry at the party for refusing to address local concerns on immigration. They cries of ‘racism’ and ‘facism’ are a lot more muted now. Tá an partáí lán de Tadhg a’ dá thaobh.
Fergus Power, an ordinary man, was amongst to first to actually seek to hold truth to power, something the left imagine they are doing while stuffing NGOs full of taxpayers’ cash and attacking local activists who are challenging the system. Sinn Féin owe him an apology. Otherwise their old guff about the Igo café and IPAS profiteering is fooling no-one.