Landlord and letting agent Marc Godart, who has been the subject of negative rulings from the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) for the illegal eviction of residential tenants, has been locked out of a property he was leasing in Dublin city centre.
Referring to the “storming of the building”, Mr Godart said the owners of 6 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2, had taken possession of the top two floors of the building on Wednesday “in the early hours around dawn”.
“The reality is that it can’t be done without a court order,” he said in an emailed statement. “We will have an overview with all details and a full list of transgressions ready in the coming days when our barrister returns to the office.”
A native of Luxembourg, Mr Godart operates a property ownership and residential and commercial letting business, and is involved in the letting of his own and other people’s property.
Patrick Freyne: I joined a gym this year. Here’s how working out is working out
‘Show some respect’, Brian Cowen told Gerry Adams in furious Belfast meeting, records show
South Korea plane crash: All but two of 181 passengers and crew dead after aircraft hits wall and catches fire
Mother who fled home with children on Christmas Day gets protection order against husband
One of Mr Godart’s companies, Green Label Properties, had a four-year-and-nine-month lease on the top two floors of 6 Westmoreland Street, and was subletting space to foreign nationals who were paying up to €900 a month each for rooms where they ran beauty salons and a barber shop.
[ Marc Godart used CCTV to monitor business tenants’ commission system Opens in new window ]
A spokesman for the owner of the building, Richmond Gate Ltd, said Mr Godart had no right to sublet, that his lease expired in December, and that they had taken possession of the property following Mr Godart’s failure to engage. “We don’t want him as a tenant.”
Mr Godart, he said, had erected partitions without fire certificates, and was charging tenants commission on their business. “He has security cameras on all the doors so he can actually count the number of clients coming in.”
On Wednesday, the owners had a steel door erected blocking entry to the top two floors. They also removed all the CCTV cameras. Soon after their security team arrived, Mr Godart, who uses an address in Luxembourg on company filings, turned up accompanied by two men.
“He demanded he be let in, that he had a lease and so on,” said the spokesman. “He said he was going to get an injunction to get back in. I don’t know on what basis. His lease finished last December and he is overholding.
“The problem is he is messing people around and he is charging them an awful lot more money than they would pay if they were dealing directly with landlords. I don’t know how he gets the inflated rents that he gets.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
