boyletimes

[boyletimes]

Sortir de l’église, c’est une forme de suicide social. On se retrouve tout seul.

Sortir« Sortir de l’église, c’est une forme de suicide social. On se retrouve tout seul. » De 2006 à 2018, Hugo Albandea a été fidèle du Tabernacle de Dijon, une église qui se présente comme « chrétienne, familiale, multi-ethnique et moderne ». En 2019, il ouvre un blog dans lequel il parle de son parcours. Hugo est entré au Tabernacle à l’âge de 19 ans. Le dynamisme de la communauté et le discours cadré autour de la sexualité et du couple lui plaisent. Il devient même pasteur du Tabernacle d’Auxerre en 2012. À cette époque, le pasteur principal s’appelle Michel Marvane.

Hugo Albandea, aujourd’hui âgé de 37 ans, a vécu une expérience chrétienne intense au sein du Tabernacle de Dijon, une église qui se définit comme « chrétienne, familiale, multi-ethnique et moderne ». De 2006 à 2018, il a été un membre engagé de cette communauté dynamique. Mais en 2019, après une rupture profonde avec l'institution, il décide d’ouvrir un blog pour partager son parcours et ses réflexions.

Hugo est entré au Tabernacle à l’âge de 19 ans. Attiré par l’énergie de la communauté et un discours structuré autour de la sexualité et du couple, il se sent rapidement chez lui. Le Tabernacle, comme beaucoup d'autres églises évangéliques, mise sur un message percutant et une vie communautaire intense pour créer un environnement propice à l’épanouissement personnel et spirituel. Ce modèle séduit particulièrement les jeunes adultes en quête de repères dans un monde en mutation.

Ce n’est pas simplement une pratique religieuse que Hugo découvre, mais un mode de vie qui s'étend au-delà des cultes du dimanche. Les groupes de prière, les activités communautaires et les échanges frénétiques sur les réseaux sociaux autour de la foi prennent une place centrale dans sa vie. Pour Hugo, l’église devient un refuge, un univers qui structure non seulement ses convictions spirituelles mais aussi ses relations sociales et professionnelles.

En 2012, alors que sa foi s’approfondit, Hugo est nommé pasteur de l’antenne d’Auxerre du Tabernacle. Ce rôle marque un tournant dans sa vie, il est désormais au cœur de l’action pastorale. Le pasteur principal à cette époque, Michel Marvane, est une figure emblématique, un mentor pour Hugo, qui l’accompagne dans ses premiers pas en tant que leader spirituel.

Mais au fil des années, des questions commencent à émerger. La structure hiérarchique de l’église, les pressions communautaires, et surtout, les contradictions entre le message de l’Évangile et les pratiques institutionnelles, rendent la relation avec le Tabernacle de plus en plus complexe. Hugo se retrouve confronté à un dilemme : comment rester fidèle à une foi personnelle tout en questionnant l'autorité de l’église à laquelle il appartient ?

Son départ en 2018, bien qu'il ait été mûrement réfléchi, est une décision difficile. « Sortir de l’église, c’est une forme de suicide social. On se retrouve tout seul », avoue-t-il dans son blog. Il ne s'agit pas simplement d'une rupture avec la foi ou avec un groupe, mais d'un véritable isolement social. Ceux qui restent au sein de l’église n’acceptent pas toujours le départ, et les liens qui étaient censés être familiaux et solides se distendent rapidement. Pour Hugo, cette rupture est d'autant plus douloureuse qu'elle s'accompagne d’un sentiment de trahison, tant de la part de ses anciens compagnons que de la structure elle-même.

Dans ses écrits, Hugo dévoile les ambiguïtés de la vie au sein d’une église évangélique comme le Tabernacle : l'enthousiasme de la communauté, la solidarité apparente et les valeurs de modernité sont souvent entachés par une certaine rigidité doctrinale, une gestion de la parole parfois dogmatique et une pression sociale constante. Pourtant, son expérience ne se résume pas à une critique purement négative. Hugo reconnaît la place qu’a occupée l’église dans sa vie, mais il appelle à un questionnement profond de ces institutions, tout en cherchant une foi qui lui soit propre, libérée des pressions extérieures.

Son blog devient ainsi un lieu de réflexion, où il explore ses doutes, ses blessures et ses espoirs. Il y parle de la quête d’un sens personnel à la spiritualité, loin des cadres institutionnels trop rigides. Pour lui, la spiritualité est avant tout une relation individuelle et intime avec Dieu, et non une performance collective dictée par des normes ou des attentes communautaires.

Aujourd'hui, Hugo Albandea vit à Dijon, loin de l'univers du Tabernacle. Mais son chemin de foi continue, loin des dogmes et des pressions sociales. Il se définit désormais comme un chrétien « en quête », explorant sa relation avec Dieu sans l'interférence d’une organisation ou d’une église particulière, mais en cultivant un esprit de liberté et de recherche personnelle.

Gisela Boulware

[boyletimes]

Widow loses life savings after ‘firetrap’ developer fails to repay €150k loan

A controversial developer who asked to borrow the life savings of an 81-year-old widow has failed to repay the money after half a decade of broken promises.

In 2017, the widow gave €160,000 in cash to developer Paddy Byrne, who built the Millfield Manor estate in Co. Kildare where six houses burnt to the ground in under 30 minutes in 2015.

The cash was for a penthouse apartment in Dublin she planned to move into.

The development was built by Victoria Homes, a company that was established by Mr Byrne’s sister Joan just before Mr Byrne was precluded from acting as a company director in Ireland for five years.

After viewing plans for the €630,000 property, in a development called Greygates in Mount Merrion, the pensioner withdrew the cash from her bank and gave it to Mr Byrne.

Some €10,000 of this was a deposit, with the remaining €150,000 provided on the advice of a third party who was known to Mr Byrne and the widow, who said the cash would secure a good price.

But in November 2017 the widow, a retired primary school teacher, found a more suitable home and asked for her  money back.

Mr Byrne agreed to this, saying he would have no problem selling the penthouse and promptly refunded the €10,000 deposit.

However, he asked that the remaining €150,000 be treated as a 14-month loan and promised to pay a 10% annual interest rate.

This effectively turned the widow into an unwitting creditor of Victoria Homes.

According to a handwritten agreement, signed by Mr Byrne, the loan was to be ‘paid back from the sales proceeds’ of the penthouse at his Greygates development.

More than half a decade later, the loan remains unpaid – even after the widow made a criminal complaint to gardaí and took legal action to secure a judgement.

As it is a civil matter, the Garda investigation faltered. And because various other unpaid creditors had previously secured judgements against Victoria Homes, the widow is now unlikely to get her savings back. During the Celtic Tiger years, Paddy Byrne was renowned for his €2.4m Sikorsky helicopter and sponsorship of the Irish National Hunt festival.

But in 2011 his then-firm, Barrack Homes, went bust and Mr Byrne declared bankruptcy in Britain with debts of €100m.

He was banned from acting as a UK director for 10 years in 2012.

This ban was scheduled to end in 2022 – and ran the full course – but it only applied in the UK and Wales.

According to the UK insolvency register today, Mr Byrne’s discharge from UK bankruptcy is ‘suspended indefinitely’ until the fulfilment of conditions made in a 2012 court order.

Separately, in Ireland, he was also restricted from acting as a director for a period of five years – which ended in January 2018.

Mr Byrne is also known for building the Millfield Manor estate in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, where half a dozen houses were razed to the ground within 30 minutes in 2015.

A report into the blaze found ‘major and life-threatening serious shortfalls and discrepancies and deviations from the minimum requirements of the national mandatory building regulations’ at Mr Byrne’s development.

Today, having exited bankruptcy, Mr Byrne is best known as the figurehead behind Victoria Homes and associated businesses, which was set up by his sister and her husband in December 2012, while he was bankrupt.

Mr Byrne was not a director or owner of Victoria Homes during the period of his bankruptcy. But, in 2017, Mr Byrne’s sister and her husband stepped back from Victoria Homes, transferring their shares to an offshore entity in Belize city called Victoria Holdings.

In November 2022, the main lenders to Victoria Homes – the Lotus Development Group – forced the firm into receivership for the second time.

In 2020, Lotus had forced a previous short-lived receivership before agreeing a deal that saw Victoria Homes begin trading normally once more.

Today, Mr Byrne appears to have left Victoria Homes behind and seems to be focusing on a new firm instead.

Set up in the summer of 2020, Branach Developments is entirely owned by Mr Byrne and is not encumbered by any bank debt or mortgages as Victoria Homes was.

According to the latest filed accounts, for the year ended 2021, Branach Developments held ‘tangible assets’ of €210,000 and ‘stocks’ of €600,000.

The accounts also show that, in 2021, Mr Byrne provided the company with an interest-free loan of €1,024,438.

Just last week Mr Byrne’s new firm was one of the winners at the National Property Awards sponsored by the Business Post and Deloitte, among others.

At the award ceremony, Branach Developments took home the prize for best sustainability initiative of the year.

However, Mr Byrne, who shuns publicity and is rarely photographed, does not appear to have attended the ceremony and the award was accepted by a colleague.

This week the Irish Mail on Sunday sent queries to Mr Byrne via his mobile phone, his email at Victoria Homes and his email at Branach Developments, without response.

Queries to his solicitor and the separate accountancy firms representing Victoria Homes and Branach Developments also went unanswered as did calls to the numbers on the websites of these firms.

Mr Byrne also previously declined to respond to questions from the MoS relating to the establishment of Victoria Homes during the period of his bankruptcy.

At the time, Mr Byrne appeared to be living at Ballinrahin House, close to Rathangan on the border of Offaly and Kildare.

The home is a luxury build on 26 acres of stud-railed paddocks with six stables and a 1.3km tree-lined avenue behind electric gates.

The property was on sale for €2.8m in 2009, but land registry records confirm that, in November 2014, it was sold to Victoria Homes for a knockdown price of €484,000.

Ownership of Ballinrahin House was transferred offshore to Victoria Holdings in Belize on April 10, 2018, just weeks before Mr Byrne was due to repay the €150,000 back to the widow.

Gisela Boulware

[boyletimes]

Back on site, the firetrap builder

THE builder behind the ‘firetrap’ housing estate in Kildare, where six houses burned to the ground in under 30 minutes, transferred €1.2m to his family and associates when he was made bankrupt in 2011.

Paddy Byrne, whose company Barrack Homes built the Millfield Manor estate in Newbridge, went bankrupt in Britain in 2011 with debts of €100m. He is one of only two Irish developers barred by the UK Insolvency Service from being a director of a company for 10 years.

The €100m debts included Nama loans that were originally from AIB. Now the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal that he is back at work again and helping to build houses for a new company owned by his sister.

On March 31, the Millfield Manor estate in Newbridge was the scene of a devastating fire in which six terraced houses were destroyed in less than half an hour.

Since then, separate engineers’ reports were commissioned by residents and Kildare County Council.

As recently as June 10, our sister paper, the Irish Daily Mail, revealed that the residents’ report had condemned fire-safety standards at the estate.

That report, by registered engineer Thomas English, found ‘major and life-threatening serious shortfalls and discrepancies and deviations from the minimum requirements of the national mandatory building regulations’.

It is not the first investigation of which Mr Byrne has fallen foul. An inquiry by the Insolvency Service in the UK revealed that he had sent €500,000 from a National Irish Bank account to his ex-wife, claiming this was a settlement to release him from any financial obligations to the marital home.

He also transferred €500,000 to the niece of a business associate, claiming this was a repayment of a loan, and he transferred €114,000 to his sister and €82,800 to a solicitor.

Because of this – and his failure to declare a house in the UK he owned – Mr Byrne is one of only two Irish developers who have been punished by the British authorities for filing false bankruptcy petitions.

In May 2013, Mr Byrne admitted his deception and accepted a nine-year extension to the oneyear restrictions normally applied to bankrupts. As a result, he is now banned from becoming a company director and from acting as a shadow director of any UK company until May 2022.

The Insolvency Service’s Allan Mitchell said: ‘They thought they could wipe these debts out in a year and move on. They transferred money to friends, relatives and associates – anyone but their creditors.’ But an MoS investigation can now link Mr Byrne to a development built by a company that is run by his sister and that operates out of the same depot as Barrack Homes did.

In December 2012, his sister, Joan, established a new propertydevelopment company using her married name, Joan Murphy.

Called Victoria Homes Ltd, the firm operates from Thomastown, Co. Kildare, and is now completing a development called Grange Hill in Rathfarnham in Dublin’s southside.

Four- and five-bed houses are already on sale at prices that range between €575,000 and €755,000, while further phases are still being built.

The website for the development states that ‘Victoria Homes is owned and managed by a team with in excess of 30 years’ experience in house building and property development’.

It says: ‘Victoria Homes Ltd have quickly forged an excellent reputation for building quality homes, built in a traditional style yet boasting all contemporary features all discerning purchasers demand.’

Although Joan Byrne/Murphy was a director of her brother’s Barrack Homes for just a week in 2011, she is known among those who have worked with her as a capable manager in the construction industry. Renowned in the past as an interior designer, she has never before been to the forefront of development projects to the extent that she now is at Victoria Homes.

The other owner and director of Victoria Homes – listed as a Patrick Murphy, with an address at Joan Byrne’s home – does not appear to have held previous directorships.

In its first and only set of filed accounts to date, Victoria Homes reported a gross profit of €119,000 and over €1m of ‘work in progress’ to the end of December 2013.

In addition to the Grange Hill development, Victoria Homes has applied for planning permission for a number of other developments in Dublin.

After receiving a tip-off, the MoS visited the Grange Hill development and photographed Mr Byrne coming and going from the site regularly over a period of weeks. He was observed staying whole days on site, and was among the last to leave after the site was locked up. He appeared to be directing work on the site.

Driving a luxury 2014 Range Rover Vogue worth in excess of €100,000, Mr Byrne appeared to be living at Ballinrahin House, close to Rathangan on the border of Offaly and Kildare.

The home is a luxury build on 26 acres of stud-railed paddocks with six stables and a 1.3km tree-lined avenue behind electric gates.

The property was on sale for €2.8m in 2009 but land registry records confirm that in November 2014 it was sold to Victoria Homes for a knockdown price of €484,000.

The MoS observed Mr Byrne coming and going from Ballinrahin House in recent weeks. Recently, we waited at the gate of the country residence to speak to him about his role at Victoria Homes.

However, when he saw us waiting, Mr Byrne declined to be questioned. Instead we left a note with our questions in the mailbox.

A mobile number pinned to the buzzer of the gate was answered by a woman who said she was renting the property and did not know Mr Byrne at all.

Mr Byrne’s sister Joan also declined to comment. ‘I don’t think it’s anything to do with you, what I do,’ she said when she was asked about Victoria Homes and her brother’s apparent role in the company. ‘My business has got absolutely nothing to do with you,’ she repeated when asked if her brother was a shadow director of Victoria Homes.

Ms Byrne also declined to comment when asked if she was the sister to whom Mr Byrne sent money prior to going bankrupt.

Asked about Mr Byrne’s Range Rover, parked in the drive, she said: ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business whose car that is.’ In addition to being a director and part owner of Victoria Homes Ltd, Ms Byrne is also a director of a number of other construction and property-related companies. At least one of these is planning a property development in Dublin.

Documents submitted to the Companies Registration Office show Ms Byrne alternates between using her maiden and married names.

Gisela Boulware