A dog daycare business run by failed Independent presidential election candidate Nick Delehanty has gone into liquidation, with the loss of 10 jobs.

The Barkleys Boutique Doggie Daycare service collected pet dogs from owners’ homes in the morning, taking them to a 10-acre farm in north Co Dublin for the day before returning the animals in late afternoon.

Sample pricing on the company website suggested it charged €54 per day with home pickup and drop-off on the “Doggy Bus” or €34 for a drop-in service.

Delehanty, a former solicitor in asset management and investment funds, established Barkleys four years ago. “It was a cost-intensive business,” he said, adding that the company could not sustain the rising cost of diesel and other expenses.

He declined to set out the scale of Barkleys’ liabilities. “We have had a bad summer. We tried to manage our costs and it didn’t work out. The business is no longer viable. I’m really disappointed.”

Delehanty, a critic of multiculturalism and public spending on international protection, failed to secure local authority support for a nomination to contest the presidential election last year. With a slogan promising to “make crime illegal”, he also campaigned unsuccessfully in the last general and local elections.

Abridged financial statements signed off in August show the company made a €23,341 profit in 2025 after incurring an €11,083 loss the previous year. The company’s net liabilities were €47,606 at the end of 2025.

Delehanty grew up on a pig farm on Co Tipperary and attended Clongowes Wood College private school in Co Kildare.

Asked what was next for him personally after the liquidation, he said: “Getting through this.”

Asked whether he might attempt a return to politics, he replied that such a move was “not on the immediate horizon”.

Mícheál Leydon of Outlook Accountants in Tallaght, Dublin, was appointed liquidator of Barkleys Boutique Doggie Daycare after a company meeting on Tuesday.

A resolution was passed saying “it has been proved to the satisfaction of this meeting that the company cannot, by reason of its liabilities, continue its business and that it is advisable to wind up same and that accordingly, the company be, and is hereby wound up voluntarily as a creditors’ voluntary winding up”.

Writing on X.com, formerly Twitter, Delehanty said trading in 2026 “has been a battle” from the start and described the company’s closure as “a very sad day”.