‘I agreed seven years ago to sell house at heart of court case’
A HIGH-PROFILE restaurateur who faces losing his family home has said that he has been willing to sell the house for the last seven years.
Ronan Ryan and his wife, former Miss Ireland Pamela Flood, have been facing repossession proceedings from US firm Tanager over their home at No. 136 Mount Prospect Avenue in Clontarf, Dublin.
The matter came before Dublin Circuit Court on Wednesday.
In a newspaper interview, Mr Ryan said he had agreed to sell the property on a number of occasions when previous owners of the mortgage tried to repossess the home, but efforts to sell the house had fallen through.
‘The loan has changed hands three times,’ Mr Ryan told the Irish Independent yesterday. ‘We never fought it, we always agreed to sell. For seven years, we’ve never stopped agreeing to sell the house.
‘I played ball the whole way along. We’ll be gone out of that house before spring is over.’
Documents seen by the Irish Daily Mail show that the purchase of the home by Mr Ryan was recorded in the Registry of Deeds in February 2007, with Bank of Scotland named as the lender.
Further documents show that the mortgage was eventually transferred to Tanager in 2014.
Mr Ryan was one of Ireland’s most successful Celtic Tiger chefs, and was co-proprietor of three popular Dublin restaurants – the Town Bar and Grill in Kildare Street, South Bar & Restaurant in Sandyford and Bridge Bar & Grill in the Docklands – before the economic crash.
He now runs popular restaurant and delivery service CounterCulture in Dublin city centre with Ms Flood, who used to present RTÉ’s Off The Rails fashion programme. The couple have four children, aged between three and 17.
In a 2017 interview, Tipperaryborn Mr Ryan revealed how much he enjoyed living in the north Dublin suburb of Clontarf.
‘I love it. It’s only ten minutes from town at off-peak,’ he said.
During the interview, he outlined how his restaurants had been performing well until the financial crash. ‘Our restaurant south in the suburbs closed, and it was the losses from there that pulled down Town Bar and Grill,’ he said. ‘There was no growth, and people were… not spending.’
He said he’d had no option but to brush himself down and relaunch himself in the restaurant business. ‘It’s just life,’ he said. ‘People say, “Well done”, and I’m like, “What are you going to do? Starve?” No, you’re going to feed your family, and it’s cyclical.
‘Standing back, you can see this. You have no experience of it, so you just ride it out.’
‘I played ball the whole way along’