East nor West, Bray’s best for Paul
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF CHATTED TO PAUL CUNNINGHAM, WHOSE CV INCLUDES STINTS IN RUSSIA AND THE US. NOW PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF A NEW YORK BAR ARE INVESTED IN A SCHEME FOR HOUSEHOLDERS CURSED WITH NEGATIVE EQUITY
FORTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Bray native Paul Cunningham is back in business in his native town after sampling very different working environments in Moscow and New York. The chartered accountant found that guns were part of the culture in Russia, where firearms might be produced in a dispute over a restaurant bill. And he also discovered that the Mafia retains a presence in the Big Apple, still running protection rackets which have to be staved off by anyone who wants to open an Irish pub.
These days, much of Paul’s considerable energy is channelled into being chairman of the Bray Emmets GAA Club with its headquarters in Old Conna. And his latest venture is a scheme to allow mortgage holders who have run into difficulties stay in their homes, as local authority tenants rather than as house owners.
In the past he has run the financial side of hotels at home and abroad but he began his working life front of house in the family eatery on the seafront in Bray. Parents Eamon and Breda Cunningham (both deceased) had Eamon’s Restaurant, later The Peppermill, with the family living overhead. The house, which had been a B&B, was practically derelict when they moved in.
Once Eamon’s was up and running, the four children has to be quiet at night out of respect for the diners below. Brother Seán Cunningham now runs one of the biggest bars in New York – the Brass Monkey – while Emmet is still lives in Bray, working as an accountant with Microsoft. Their sister Breda Anne is a nurse in Scotland and Paul himself resides in Greystones, though his office and the GAA club are in Bray.
From the age of ten or so, he was on call in the restaurant, every day until he was 18: ‘We would be up doing our homework and a customer would come in. Father was in the kitchen and one of us would do the waiting at table. The kids did all the serving during the week when it was quiet.’
He went to school at Presentation and enjoyed education. There was just one problem for a Gaelic football loving lad: sport in the Pres was monopolised by rugby. When he reached fifth year, this golden rule was finally breached. Classmate Damien Tiernan from Newtownmountkennedy, who went on to become RTÉ’s South East correspondent, was also on the team which broke new ground, as was Robert Short, who also later became a broadcaster.
In the classroom, Paul was drawn to economics, maths and business organisation but, by his own admission, he was bad at languages. His antipathy to French led eventually to his expulsion just a few weeks away from the Leaving Certificate. He was caught by teacher Miss Adamson mitching from French classes and he was thrown out, though allowed back to sit the State exams.
‘My kids think this is hilarious,’ he laughs. ‘I enjoyed school but I was a little bit of a messer and I should have knuckled down a little bit more.’ Instead of going directly to college, he was taken on by an accountancy firm in Dun Laoghaire at €3,000 a year. It sent him to night school. Clients included Bray Travel, then a huge company, and McDonald’s, which had a huge chilled warehouse in Finglas, where he counted burgers by the pallet load during stock-taking.
He passed all his accounting exams without a hitch, flying through to become qualified in his chosen profession in 1992. He moved on to become a financial controller at the Dublin Sport Hotel in Kilternan – commuting up the hill on his Honda 50. Billionaire philanthropist Chuck Feeney – ‘a most unassuming guy who wears a Timex watch’ – had great plans for the place but it was still very run down. The bedrooms were being renovated, so it functioned as a leisure centre with a golf course attached.
THEN Jury’s Hotels came looking for accountants and he made a favourable impression at interview. The aspiring bean counter hoped to stay in Ireland, or maybe be posted to London. Instead, he was dispatched to Glasgow, an experience which left him with a lifelong, season ticket holding, love of Celtic Football Club.
He ended up via Bristol at the group’s second biggest hotel, in Cork. He had a great time during his two years on Leeside, playing golf for the first time and lining out on the football pitch with Nemo Rangers. The hotel welcomed the Pogues and the Corrs during his tenure of office.
With further promotion unlikely, his ears pricked up when a friend let him know that there were opportunities going a-begging in Russia. European companies in Moscow were keen to pay good salaries to English-speaking Irish executives in 1998. It was not a place where everyone could feel comfortable, as Paul Cunningham quickly discovered on the payroll of a Swiss company which ran supermarkets and restaurants.
‘The first board meeting I attended was adjourned when guys came in with guns and said the meeting is over,’ he remembers. ‘We had bodyguards employed at $300 a month. ExKGB.’ The mind which took against languages at school was speaking Russian within a few months, bluffing his way in conversation with taxi drivers on the form of Spartak Moscow.
He left when the economy crashed, buying the house in Greystones with the money which his Swiss employers had put aside in hard currency. He had married to Belinda Martin from Newtownmountkennedy, and the couple have daughters Eimear and Áine – neither of whom shows any interest in football.
Next up was a stint in New York, where an ambitious Irish entrepreneur had acquired a vast restaurant in Time Square – Mars 2112. A sum of $16 million was thrown at fitting out the premises with rocket ships and lava running down the walls. After Paul’s three years in the finance department, the place was making money but the global chain which investors were hoping for never materialised.
‘I got totally burnt out by it,’ Paul confesses. ‘I
loved New York but couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.’ While away he met fellow Bray-ites, all keen to make their mark with Irish pubs – the likes of David Finnegan and Keith Doyle.
He opened up the Pioneer bar at The Bowery, the city’s Skid Row, in the same building as a doss-house and his brother Seán ran the place, while Paul came home. Then a second property became available in the meat packing district, converting a plumber’s depot to become the Brass Monkey bar.
‘I am not exaggerating when I say it is the busiest boozer in New York City, taking in $250,000 dollars a week. It would do the same turnover as all the pubs in Bray combined.’
Paul sold out his interest to Seán since he came back again to Ireland in 2001 to work as an accountant, working with the Clarion Hotel group in Dublin city centre. He also ran front of house in the family restaurant at the same time.
He had a spell with Mace Promotions and was at Applegreen when the Celtic Tiger collapsed. Instead of managing expansion, he found himself supervising a massive redundancy programme – 75 people shown the door in the head office alone, himself eventually included.
He landed up on the books of the Fitzpatrick’s Hotel in Killiney sorting out their debt problems to produce a business which is now flourishing. Then a couple of years ago he took an initiative with personal insolvency practitioner Michael Bolger – again from Bray – to set up Beacon Capital, advising people on commercial debt management.
This change of tack led logically considering the fate of hose in personal debt with homes in negative equity. Home for Life, as they call the business, was set up with Charlie O’Reilly Hyland from Brittas and his son Max.
It offers a way out to people who have lost their ability to make mortgage repayments, typically because of circumstances such as unemployment, ill health or family breakdown. The aim is to keep them in their homes by buying the property, then letting councils take the former owners on as tenants.
CUNNINGHAM and Bolger worked with Government to refine a mortgage-torent scheme to assist many of those who would otherwise find their homes re-possessed.
Ten per cent of homes across the Republic are still in negative equity, saddled with more debt than they are worth on the open market. There are probably around 800 such households in Co. Wicklow alone and Paul is reaching out to them. Homes worth up to €365,000 are eligible for inclusion in the State-backed scheme.
‘It is extremely fair. Since September we have made offers out to 38 householders.’ Paul says he has received more than 460 expressions of interest. One big sales point is that the neighbours need never know but that the original occupiers have the security of knowing that they can remain at home for the rest of their lives paying affordable rents.