{"id":399430,"date":"2026-04-15T08:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T08:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/399430\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T08:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T08:51:07","slug":"high-court-judge-critical-of-supermacs-owner-in-case-involving-unpaid-rent-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/399430\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court judge critical of Supermac\u2019s owner in case involving unpaid rent \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The conduct of Pat McDonagh<\/a>, the owner of Supermac\u2019s<\/a>, in a High Court<\/a> case over the non-payment of rent<\/a>, was \u201cless than satisfactory,\u201d a judge has said when finding against the fast-food chain.<\/p>\n

However, he said the behaviour of McDonagh, who gave evidence to the three-day hearing, did not come close to justifying a suggestion that the court should award aggravated damages against the Galway businessman.<\/p>\n

Judge Sean Gillane found against Supermac\u2019s and in favour of businessman Richard Duggan, in a case involving \u20ac124,502, plus interest, arising from unpaid rent on a premises on High Street, Kilkenny<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The court heard the premises was owned by Duggan, who acquired it in March 2008 when it was already rented to Supermac\u2019s. In December 2008 an arbitration process fixed the rent at \u20ac186,754 each year, to be paid in monthly instalments.<\/p>\n

Duggan used the premises, and a number of others, as security for financial arrangements he had with AIB. After he fell into default, the debt was eventually assigned to Everyday Finance which, in 2020, appointed a receiver over the various charged properties, which were put up for sale, according to the judgment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Covid pandemic was under way. Over a period in 2020 and 2021, Supermac\u2019s at times failed to pay the monthly rent, and at other times paid only half of what was due.<\/p>\n

At one stage Supermac\u2019s wrote to the agents for the receiver, Madden Property Consultants, seeking a 50 per cent rent reduction, but the request was not acceded to, according to the judgment in the case.<\/p>\n

It was submitted during the case that McDonagh\u2019s evidence as to why the rent was not paid was inconsistent with earlier claims he made that the rent was not due or owing. At one stage he said he was not sure who the rent was due to after the receiver was appointed.<\/p>\n

In his decision, Gillane said the eventual sale of the Kilkenny premises had little relevance to the issue he had to decide upon, but that McDonagh\u2019s perception that he was excluded from the sales process was \u201cundoubtedly the source of some animus towards [Duggan] on his part\u201d.<\/p>\n

An agent of McDonagh\u2019s was told in 2020 that the asking price for the Kilkenny property was \u20ac2.4 million, according to the judgment. The property was sold in 2021.<\/p>\n

At one stage during the trial, according to the judgment, it was put to McDonagh that \u201cSupermac\u2019s is sitting and has for the last four to five years been sitting on almost \u20ac125,000 of money to which, whatever about anyone else, Supermac\u2019s is not entitled. Is that right?\u201d<\/p>\n

To which McDonagh replied: \u201cThat is 100 per cent correct.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The conduct of Pat McDonagh, the owner of Supermac\u2019s, in a High Court case over the non-payment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,73,61,60,12969,105060,3665,21023],"class_list":{"0":"post-399430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-high-court","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-kilkenny","13":"tag-pat-mcdonagh","14":"tag-renting","15":"tag-supermacs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}