WHILE IT HAS been reported multiple times over the years that former Stardust manager Eamon Butterly has (or had) a significant network of business interests, establishing details on it has proved more difficult.
Eamon, alongside his father Patrick, was the most prominent figure in the family business which owned the Stardust nightclub.
In evidence to the inquests in recent months, Eamon described Patrick as “the boss”, while referring to himself, aged 36 at the time of the 1981 fire, as the “manager of managers”.
The Butterly family presided over a wide network of businesses in its heyday – however over the years many have shut or went into receivership during the financial crisis, leaving the family’s current financial state somewhat unclear.
The Butterlys business affairs tend to be difficult to get a handle on as they were conducted through a web of linked companies.
Patrick Butterly was widely reported to be a multimillionaire at the time, having built himself up from a market gardener.
As well as the building of the Stardust, he also led a food business, Scott Foods Ltd, with shareholdings for individual companies often divided among the rest of the Butterly family.
Getting into the details is where things get messy. The family’s companies include entities such as Scott Foods Ltd, Butterly Enterprises Limited, and Patrick Butterly & Sons.
Accounts are not available for most of these businesses from the years around the fire. The earliest filings available for Scott Foods Ltd and Butterly Enterprises Ltd are from 1991, when net assets were reported to be just under IRE£1m (worth around €2.4 million in today’s money) and IRE£570,000 (around €1.4 million) respectively.
However, this is only part of the picture as Patrick, Eamon and his brother Colm were listed directors of around a dozen family companies each as of 1993, with money moving between many of them.
For example, while Scott Foods Ltd owned the Stardust building, this was leased to an entity called Silver Swan Ltd, which did not even have a formal tenancy agreement until after the Stardust fire.
The Butterly family received just over IRE£580,000 (just over €2 million in today’s money) in compensation in 1983 after taking a claim against Dublin Corporation. This was based on the Keane Tribunal’s finding that the fire was ‘probably’ caused by arson, although this was called into question in the years since and was struck from the Dáil record in 2009.
However, writing in his memoirs years later, Patrick Butterly said that legal fees associated with bringing the claim and of the Stardust tribunal itself cost “a million pounds”, with the compensation from Dublin Corporation used to help pay the bill.
After the fire and in the lead up to the Celtic Tiger, the fortunes of the Butterlys appears to have become more closely linked to property, with Scott Foods Ltd being liquidated in 1996.
The family’s main asset was the Butterly Business Park in Artane, which included the site of the former Stardust nightclub as part of a bigger development. The family also owned several other small sites around Dublin, including a fuel station and several units in the Dublin Industrial Estate in Glasnevin.
At this stage the Butterlys’ main holding company was viewed as being a business called Turret Properties, which had assets of €35m as of the end of 2010.
This was likely largely due to the value of the Butterly Business Park itself. In 2012, the family received permission to redevelop in a major commercial and residential scheme.
Unfortunately for the Butterlys, by that point the Irish property market was in free-fall and the family’s businesses were indebted to AIB, which called in the loans.
Receivers were appointed to many of the Butterlys’ companies with AIB selling off the Butterly Business Park in an effort to recoup the money owed by the family, reported to be around €30m.
After the Butterly group went into receivership, Colm, Eamon’s brother who was a director of many of the family’s businesses, got into financial difficulty.
EBS took Colm to court in 2017 in an attempt to repossess his home in Clontarf. While just €200,000 was owed on the home worth approximately €700,000, the court was told that Colm paid just €2,500 between 2015 and 2016. Colm died in February 2021.
Eamon resigned as a director of many of the family’s businesses before they went into receivership.
While he was reported to be living in a large detached home in Malahide in 2006, he has not been listed as a director of any companies in years.
Despite this, there is still an indication that the Butterly family has some residual business interests.
Eamon is listed as the owner of a business named Rush Holiday Homes, which shares its registered office with 25 other corporate entities.
Some 14 of those have been dissolved and of the remainder, Eamon was never listed as a director in many of them.
However, Eamon was a director for one of the firms, Newland Court Management Company Ltd. This was the management company for an apartment block built on a site known as Newlands in Artane, where Eamon had acquired the freehold interest.
Although Eamon resigned as a director from the company years ago, another family member, Jean Butterly, is a director of the firm. The company took in and spent about €30,000 in 2022, the most recent year for which accounts are available.
Eamon Butterly declined through his solicitors to comment when contacted by The Journal.
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