An investment fund promoted by barrister and debt adviser Ross Maguire is receiving rent of €2 million per year from Dublin City Council for a vacant hostel.

Avalon House at Aungier Street, Dublin city, has been dormant since a legal wrangle six years ago when local objectors went to the High Court to block plans by the Peter McVerry Trust (PMVT) charity to provide homeless accommodation in the property.

The dispute led Dublin City Council to take over the McVerry Trust lease in May 2021. The council pays €300,000 in annual insurance, security and utility costs in addition to the €2 million annual rent. Apart from a ground floor café, the property is vacant.

Under the PMVT and council tenancies, the total rent bill was €10 million between 2020 and 2024. In the same period, the additional costs were about €1.5 million.

“Avalon House is not usable without significant capital works, as PMVT had commenced strip-out prior to the lease transfer,” said the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE), a division of the city council.

A new planning process was set in motion in February 2023, but an application to develop a homeless family hub in the property has still not been submitted.

Since 2022, the landlord is Irish Social Housing Fund 1, an investment vehicle promoted by Mr Maguire in partnership with international investors. “It is not my fund and I have no ownership in the fund,” Mr Maguire said in reply to questions.

A senior counsel, he came to prominence after the financial crash as a debt adviser to people in mortgage arrears and later moved into investment. The fund is listed among the partners of his advisory company New Beginning on its website.

Avalon House, once a medical school, is a protected structure, meaning owners are required to prevent it from becoming endangered. The building was a hostel for backbackers before the PMVT set out plans to provide emergency accommodation for up to 155 rough sleepers.

The trust had taken out a 20-year lease on the property in November 2019 with a company called Trittkopf, whose ultimate parent is BJM, a firm based in Cyprus. The city council took over the lease “for the residue of the term” as part of the settlement of the court case.

When Irish Social Housing Fund 1 acquired Avalon House in 2022, Mr Maguire was described as its “authorised signatory” in a planning submission to the council.

Mr Maguire suggested questions should be directed to the fund itself but a phone call to the fund was answered in his New Beginning office.

The fund is authorised and supervised by the Central Bank. However, the bank said it “does not have any regulatory role to make publicly available the prospectus or financial statements of the fund”.

Responsibility for releasing financial information was with the alternative investment fund manager, the bank said. The fund manager, IQ-EQ, did not return phone calls or reply to questions emailed to a named company official in Dublin.

The DRHE said it considered “all options” for Avalon House, including exiting the lease or an alterative use for it. “A family hub was considered to be the only viable use,” it said.

“The DRHE commenced the capital works application process, conditional approval was granted by the DHLGH in February 2023 and full Stage 1 approval given in June 2023, following compliance with the funding conditions,” it added.

“In late 2023, the DRHE tendered to procure an integrated design team. An integrated design team for the transformation of Avalon House into a family hub was appointed on April 5th, 2024, and we are currently preparing a planning application for a family hub.”