{"id":566572,"date":"2026-07-24T21:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566572\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T21:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:14:12","slug":"much-ado-about-nothing-wexford-holiday-home-owner-found-in-hidden-room-speaks-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566572\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Much ado about nothing’: Wexford holiday home owner found in ‘hidden room’ speaks out"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the holiday home owner suspended from the booking.com<\/a> website after a stunned family found him in a \u201chidden room\u201d behind a makeshift wall in the house they rented from him.<\/p>\n

Seamus Shay Conway told the Irish Mirror there was nothing sinister about him staying in an area that was partitioned from the living room of the house he has been renting out to tourists.<\/p>\n

He insisted he did nothing wrong and said the property is booked out on the travel portal.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Seamus Conway<\/p>\n

The story hit the headlines this week when shocked guest \u2018Therese\u2019 phoned RTE\u2019s Liveline programme after she said she and her family found a man behind a wall during their one night stay at a holiday home she booked in Courtown, Co Wexford, last Saturday.<\/p>\n

The Irish Mirror has spoken to the owner of the property at 26 Glenbeg Point in Courtown – who confirmed that it was him that Therese and her family discovered behind the wall.<\/p>\n

Mr Conway, who we have also independently established is the registered owner of the house, claimed there was nothing \u201csinister\u201d about the situation.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The property in Co Wexford(Image: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin)<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWell I had a group of people who came to my house. They took a panel down off the wall after arriving straight in and called the police. That\u2019s what happened,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n

Asked if it was him who \u2018Therese\u2019s\u2019 stunned partner discovered after he took down part of the plasterboard, Mr Conway said: \u201cI was (in there) yeah. In my room. And I have a back exit. I\u2019m entitled to stay there. It\u2019s my house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therese told Liveline this week that she booked the property along with her partner and two children.<\/p>\n

\"Irish<\/p>\n

Irish Mirror’s Paul Healy at the property(Image: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin)<\/p>\n

\"Seamus<\/p>\n

Seamus Conway spoke out <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mr Conway said he is in Italy at the moment<\/p>\n

She said she met the landlord to get a key and asked him if he would be there later on when she discovered he had the dryer on.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had his clothes in his dryer at the time, and so they were drying away. I was leaving, heading back to the party, and I said, \u2018Will you be here tonight when I come back?\u2019 And he went, \u2018Oh no, no, I won\u2019t be here\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A picture of the wall has also been published by the Irish Mirror – showing the gap where Therese\u2019s partner had later taken down the plasterboard and discovered Mr Conway in his partitioned room.<\/p>\n

Therese this week said that when she and her partner came back to the property on Saturday night the washing machine was running which made them wonder if the landlord had returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knocked off the washing machine because the kids were going to bed at that point, and I was like, \u2018I\u2019m going to knock off the washing machine because the single beds were right beside it\u2019,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Feeling put off by the whole situation, Therese asked her partner to check the rooms, which is when they noticed something very strange with the property.<\/p>\n

\u201cStill I felt a little bit weird. So I said to my partner, \u2018Will you go upstairs and just check all the rooms.\u2019 And he went up, then he came back down. He was feeling a little bit weird. We didn\u2019t initially notice that there was like this partition-looking wall.<\/p>\n

They then noticed \u201ca really thin piece of plasterboard with a nail\u201d and one part without a nail in the sitting room. \u201cSo my partner went, \u2018What\u2019s behind that?\u2019 Because it looked like it could move. So when he went to move it, it came off,\u201d Therese said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just darkness behind it and I hear \u2018hey, hey\u2019, so we obviously died. And I went, \u2018Is there somebody behind that wall?\u2019 And he went, \u2018Yes\u2019. Now the man didn\u2019t come out near us, but like straight away, I went to get the kids and just leave right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

However Mr Conway claimed: \u201cShe booked it for one night. She arrived in and I showed her the house. She said it was fine.<\/p>\n

Asked if he specifically told the family that his room was behind a wall in the house Mr Conway said: \u201cWell I\u2019m obviously going to be behind a wall in another room separated from the main house.\u201d<\/p>\n

The room, which doesn\u2019t have a door inside the house, was accessible to Mr Conway via an exit out the back garden, he said. The back garden is divided by a fence into two – with the side that Mr Conway said he could exit from not being accessible to guests.<\/p>\n

Mr Conway rejected the criticism directed against him and insisted that there was nothing wrong about him staying in his own home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey say it was behind a wall. It was in a room with its own exit. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that,\u201d Mr Conway said. \u201cTo describe a wall as something sinister is very unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if he informed all of his guests that he was staying at the property Mr Conway said he did. \u201cIf I\u2019m staying, yeah,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it was relevant. Obviously not if I was not there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Put to him that him staying behind the wall was at the very least unusual Mr Conway said: \u201cWell if you want to describe it like that as something sinister there\u2019s nothing I can do about that. But if there has to be a room there has to be a wall. There\u2019s no getting around that. If there\u2019s no wall there\u2019s no separation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Conway, who said he was in Italy at the moment, insisted his property, which has since been temporarily suspended from Booking.com<\/a> in the wake of this story, remains fully booked out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually full. I\u2019m full. There\u2019s no availability. The last I looked at it all the bookings that I wanted were there. I had my quota for the year you know,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked how he went to the toilet given he was residing in such a small space, Mr Conway responded: \u201cHow did I go to the toilet? Em I have a bathroom there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again put to him that the entire situation was unusual he said: \u201cWell it\u2019s being described in an unusual way. There\u2019s nothing you can do about that really. I think it\u2019s much ado about nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Booking.com told the Irish Mirror that it had suspended Mr Conway\u2019s ad pending an investigation. \u201cWe take safety and security very seriously. As soon as we were made aware of this incident, we launched an investigation into the property, which is ongoing,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe property has been suspended while the investigation is completed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardai meanwhile confirmed they had been called to the premises last Saturday – but no criminal wrongdoing was identified. A Garda spokesperson said: \u201cGarda\u00ed in Gorey were called to a residential property in Gorey, Co. Wexford on Sunday 20th July, 2026. Garda\u00ed responded to the matter and no criminal offence disclosed, at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the holiday home owner suspended from the booking.com website after a stunned family found him in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,16587,61,60,47726,4310,9270],"class_list":["post-566572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-holidays","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liveline","tag-property","tag-wexford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566572","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=566572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}