“This country is big enough for everyone to have their own house,” Dublin property developer Paddy Shanahan told The Sunday Press newspaper in July 1991.

He was being interviewed to promote a development of what the newspaper called “luxury apartments and award-winning town houses” on a site off Buckingham Street, “on the hard edge of the north inner city”.

Under the headline “Developer defies area’s ‘mean streets’ reputation”, Shanahan describes how the development, christened Buckingham Village, would reinvigorate Dublin’s inner city.

The apartments were on the market for £28,500 (€36,000) and he had already sold 23 of them, he said.

Shanahan said he was not worried about criminality.

“And there’s only a few here, well known to me, to them and to the gardaí who are involved [in policing the area]. Remove them and it would be a much better place,” he said.

Thirty-five years later, Buckingham Village is still standing. But its promise of luxury inner-city living, free from criminality, never came to pass.

For much of its history, the 125-flat complex has had links with the organised crime that has plagued much of inner-city Dublin.

At the same time, it was allowed to deteriorate to the point that at one stage in recent years, the apartments accounted for almost half of all prohibition notices – formal legal orders that stop landlords renting out a property – issued by Dublin City Council.

Ownership of some apartments changes hands frequently, making it difficult to determine who is responsible for their upkeep.

This is according to Belinda Nugent of the Inner City Organisations Network, which provides advice to tenants about their rights.

“It needs huge redevelopment,” she says.

Independent Dublin City councillor Nial Ring goes further: “It’s one of the most horrible complexes in the city. It’s a depressing place. It looks dilapidated. It’s been a problem for years.”

Using planning documents, enforcement data, property folios and company records, along with interviews with residents, activists, elected representatives and gardaí, The Irish Times has pieced together a history of Buckingham Village over its 3½-decade existence.

The evidence points to a development that not only failed to revive the northeast inner city, but hosted a new, more dangerous strain of criminality, while leaving residents living in some of the worst housing conditions in the capital.

From tenements to development

Buckingham Village was built on the site of Buckingham Buildings, a tenement complex constructed by the Dublin Artisan Dwellings Company in the 1870s to provide affordable housing to working-class Dubliners.

By the late 20th century, when it came to the attention of Shanahan and his company Manito Enterprises, the buildings had fallen into disrepair and many of the apartments were vacant.

“The blocks were never popular with tenants. There were complaints about drainage and the quality of the build,” says Joe Brady, an urban geographer and retired UCD professor.

The rents were comparatively high, Brady says, and those who could afford to rent there did not want to live near the brothels of nearby Monto, once thought to be the largest red-light district in Europe.

[ Video: Take a tour of Monto, Dublin's one-time notorious red light districtOpens in new window ]

[ George Redmond among most corrupt officials in Irish historyOpens in new window ]

Planning for Shanahan’s development was approved by George Redmond, the corrupt Dublin City Council official who was later pursued by the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab).

Despite Shanahan’s boasting in the press, the refurbishment work of the old tenements was not of a high quality.

“Coarsely remodelled” was the verdict of architectural historian Christine Casey in a 2006 survey of Dublin’s inner-city buildings.

“The renovation was pretty much a minimalist affair. The buildings didn’t really look a lot better in the 1990s than they do now,” says Brady.

Shanahan, though presenting himself as a legitimate businessman who had recently returned from the UK to help improve his home city, was by then deeply connected to organised crime.

By the time work started on the site in the late 1980s, the builder, through his property schemes, was laundering money for some of Dublin’s most notorious criminals, including Gerry “the Monk” Hutch and George Mitchell.

The young Hutch was fresh off the back of one of the most infamous heists in the history of the State. In 1987, his gang robbed up to £1.7 million from a cash van in Fairview and he needed somewhere to launder the money.

Many gardaí believe he did this by investing in the Buckingham Village development, along with Mitchell, the Dublin drug dealer and bank robber known as the Penguin, and Matt Kelly, a businessman who owned a carpet business in the city and had close links to organised criminals.

Property records show Shanahan personally purchased 19 flats in the complex. Many gardaí believed at the time that he purchased some or all of these in the name of Hutch.

[ From the archive: Inside the Gerard Hutch PR machine: ‘Whether it was intentional or not, he did very well at marketing himself’Opens in new window ]

Matt Kelly later purchased eight but they were registered in the name of his solicitor Derek Stewart, court and property records show.

Stewart, who has no involvement in criminality, would later go on to build a successful practice specialising in immigration law and serve as chair of the Immigrant Council of Ireland. Matt Kelly’s late brother Des Kelly, of Des Kelly carpets, purchased one apartment.

Hutch had lived around the corner in a house on Buckingham Street and property data shows it was around this time that he started purchasing property in the area, including several houses on Buckingham Street.

“He got people to buy the apartments in Buckingham Village in his name. He was up to his eyes in money. He needed somewhere to launder it,” says a retired senior garda who pursued Hutch for much of his career.

“It was presented as a rejuvenation of sorts of the north inner city, but Gerry would see the strategic angle. Shanahan didn’t have any money. He was a front.”

Not everyone is certain Hutch outright owned apartments in the complex.

“I don’t think Hutch would have had the money at that point to invest in Buckingham Village,” says Felix McKenna, the former head of the Criminal Assets Bureau who also spent much of his career investigating Hutch.

Although Hutch purchased houses in Buckingham Street in his own name, he never signed any official documents connecting him to Buckingham Village.

McKenna says that regardless of whether Hutch owned the apartments, it was clear his gang was establishing the complex and surrounding area as a base of operations for his criminal activity.

“History has borne that out that it was used as a planning centre and a nerve centre, particularly the car park of Buckingham Village,” says McKenna.

“Buckingham Village was not just on Gerry Hutch’s doorstep. He was an integral part of the area. Nothing happened there without his say so,” says another former garda.

The murder of the developer

Business was initially slow for Shanahan. A year after Buckingham Village came on the market, only 35 apartments had been sold. Nevertheless, Shanahan expanded the development, from 80 flats to 125.

The first tenants were mostly clients of the Eastern Health Board, which paid most or all the rent. Because the development qualified as an urban renewal project, the owners of the flats received tax allowances of up to 96 per cent.

Then, as now, the vast majority of tenants had nothing to do with criminality. But from the start, several serious offenders called the development home.

In 1992, a resident was arrested for attempting to smuggle £50,000 worth of ecstasy through Dublin Airport, at the time the largest consignment of the drug ever seized in the State. In the subsequent years, the complex was targeted several times by anti-drugs vigilantes who broke into apartments and threatened suspected dealers.

The development’s connection to the Dublin underworld was cemented on October 14th, 1994, when Shanahan was shot dead as he left a gym in Crumlin.

No one was ever arrested for the murder. In the aftermath, crime journalists blamed a known criminal who had invested in Buckingham Village and was unhappy with his return.

But Hutch was never a suspect. He was close with Shanahan and was reportedly deeply upset after his death.

Some even speculated Hutch might try to avenge Shanahan’s murder. A 1995 Sunday Independent article by journalist Veronica Guerin, who regularly used Hutch as a source, quoted an associate of “The Monk” as saying: “If he’s going to take someone out, he doesn’t advertise it in a newspaper.”

In the following years, the properties in Shanahan’s name were gradually sold off to various buyers. Matt Kelly, whose brother Eamon was murdered in a gangland hit in 2012, also began selling his eight apartments after reaching a €3.5 million settlement with Cab in 2002 for undeclared taxes and interest. In August 2017, Danske Bank registered a security charge against all eight of the Kelly apartments.

In the late 1990s, a new generation of developers from outside Dublin became interested in Buckingham Village. Unlike some of the previous owners, these owners have no connections to criminality.

One of the buyers was a 37-year-old man named John McCann from Castleblayney, Co Monaghan. McCann and his companies first started purchasing flats in the complex in 1997 in a public auction after they had entered receivership.

Over the next several years, he would expand his ownership to dozens of flats in the development.

At the same time, McCann, a former garage owner, who has no involvement in criminality, was on his way to becoming one of most successful developers of the Celtic Tiger era.

Through his Castleway family of companies, he built a €25 million business park in Philadelphia, an €80 million shopping centre in the UK and the Xerox technology campus in Dundalk, Co Louth.

McCann, who comes from Drumacon in Co Monaghan but lives across the Border in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, and spends time in Switzerland, also developed a reputation for coming to the rescue of property businesses in distress. In 2008 he led a €75 million takeover of McEnaney Construction in Co Louth after it went into examinership.

Fuel laundering

John McCann was joined by his younger brother Declan in buying up flats in Buckingham Village. Property records show Declan McCann purchased seven apartments in the development.

This was the limit of Declan McCann’s involvement in the property business, according to company records. His sole business venture in the Republic is DMC Security, which he set up with his mother in 2008 for the purpose of carrying out “investigation and security activities”, company records show. It was wound up two years later.

Unlike his older brother, Declan McCann has a significant criminal record.

In 2018, he was before the courts in Ireland when he was convicted of charges relating to diesel laundering. He received a suspended sentence.

In between, Declan McCann was named in the Manchester Evening News, based on confidential police files, of being one of the prime suspects in IRA’s 1996 bombing of Manchester city centre which left more than 200 people injured. It was the largest bomb detonated in Britain since the second World War.

Through his solicitor, McCann, who sometimes goes by the nickname Duckie, previously denied any involvement in the attack and said he was not in Manchester at the time. He was never arrested or charged. A police officer was subsequently charged and acquitted for leaking the investigation file to journalists.

A relative of Declan McCann was also suspected of involvement in the 2013 robbery of a credit union in Lordship, Co Louth, during which Det Garda Adrian Donohoe was shot dead, according to Garda sources.

The ‘centre of operations’ for a gangland hit

Just after 11am on February 5th, 2016, a group of men arrived in Buckingham Village’s central car park area. Two hours later, a silver Ford Transit van left the complex and drove north across the city.

The van contained three gunmen armed with assault rifles and dressed to resemble Garda firearms officers. It also carried a man wearing a flat cap and armed with a handgun and another armed man dressed as a woman.

At 2.30pm, the van arrived at the Regency Hotel in Drumcondra on the north side of Dublin where they carried out the most infamous gangland shooting in the State’s history. The gunmen were there to kill Daniel Kinahan, the alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group and bitter rival of the Hutch gang.

Kinahan was at the hotel for a boxing weigh-in but fled before the shooters could locate him. Instead, they shot dead Kinahan’s friend David Byrne.

Byrne’s murder would accelerate a bloody feud between the Kinahan and Hutch gangs, which would leave 18 people dead by the time the violence burned itself out two years later.

In the aftermath of the Regency, gardaí descended on Buckingham Village with a warrant to search Number 56, the apartment at the gate that serves as a security office.

Several residents were interviewed. Gardaí also interviewed Declan McCann, who they believed sold the van used in the attack, Garda sources said. McCann was not arrested and was not accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the shooting.

[ Inside Gerry Hutch’s life in Lanzarote: An investigation into gang leader turned politician’s assetsOpens in new window ]

In subsequent court cases, the prosecution labelled Buckingham Village as the logistical hub and staging post used by the Hutch gang for the attack.

In its 2023 judgment, the Special Criminal Court stated members of the Hutch family “clearly” have close connections to the complex, which judges called the “centre of operations” for the shooting.

According to audio surveillance of Gerry Hutch, the guns used in the attack were stored in the complex before the shooting and were under the control of Patsy Hutch, Gerry’s older brother.

Jonathan Dowdall, a former Sinn Féin councillor who testified against Gerry Hutch during his trial, also gave evidence that Patsy Hutch “got rid of the CCTV” in the complex before the shooting.

Gerry Hutch was eventually acquitted of all charges, although the judges said they believed he was in control of the assault rifles following the shooting. Two other men were convicted of more minor charges.

Around the time of the Garda investigation, another State agency was also taking an interest in Buckingham Village. John McCann, like so many other property developers, had become a victim of the 2008 crash.

In 2013, the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) – the Government agency set up to purge the banks of property loans after the economic crash – secured a €114 million judgment against the developer leading to the banks taking possession of many of his holdings.

In August 2016, Nama registered charges against 23 Buckingham Village flats, all of them owned by John McCann. The next year, Danske Bank registered interests against another 21 flats in the complex owned by the developer.

Prohibition notices

In 2018, Dublin City Council also began examining Buckingham Village. The council had started receiving complaints from residents about the condition of some of the apartments.

Inspectors from the council’s environmental health section were dispatched to investigate reports of damp, electrical issues and water ingress from tenants renting the apartments.

A number of official notices were issued, requiring landlords to bring the flats up to standard. When these were ignored, inspectors issued further notices before finally issuing “prohibition orders” against the owners of three apartments, according to data obtained by The Irish Times.

Prohibition notices are the final step in an enforcement ladder and are only issued when a landowner refuses or ignores requests to improve their tenants’ apartments.

“It is an escalation of enforcement and cannot be used as a first step of enforcement,” a council spokesman says.

“Properties subject to these notices cannot be offered for rent until the necessary improvements are made. However, the existing tenant may continue to live there.”

Council inspections continued and by the following year the number of flats in the complex subject to improvement notices had risen to 12.

They continued to rise until 2022, when 27 premises, or more than a fifth of apartments in the complex were subject to notices. That year, Buckingham Village accounted for 47 per cent of all prohibition notices issued by the council.

Between 2018 and 2024, 10 per cent of the 297 properties served with prohibition notices in all of Dublin city were in Buckingham Village, far more than any other housing unit.

Prohibition notices are designed to improve conditions for tenants, particularly those in receipt of rental assistance from the State. However, they can also lead to homelessness, including among the residents of Buckingham Village.

Although tenants of a property subject to a notice do not have to leave, the council must, by law, cease paying housing assistance payments (Hap) to the landlord. The result is often the eviction of the tenant, says Belinda Nugent, the housing rights worker who advises residents of the complex.

“The council gives them six weeks to get it up to scratch. If the prohibition notice is issued the [Hap] is stopped and the tenant is then evicted,” she says.

“It’s a huge issue for us. It’s a catch-22 for the tenant. If they make a complaint they risk being made homeless.”

Asked about the policy, a council spokesman says ceasing Hap payments is a way of engaging with the landlord to bring the property into compliance.

“The?prohibition?notice is not the first step in enforcement and follows previous correspondences and engagements with a landlord,” the spokesman says.

“The aim of the inspection process is never to create homelessness rather it is to ensure that the minimum standards are achieved in private rented properties.”

Gold lamp-posts

It is not clear from the existing property records how many of the properties served with prohibition notices were owned by John or Declan McCann at the time.

The figures show 21 of the 29 flats issued with prohibition notices had been owned by one or other of the men at some stage. But it is possible some were sold before the prohibition notices were issued.

Either way, company records show the McCann family continue to have substantial interests in Buckingham Village. Today, much of the property is owned by a company called Northside Apartments, which was established in 2014.

In 2022, it moved its headquarters from a business park in Balbriggan to No 56 Buckingham Village, the same property searched by detectives investigating the Regency shooting in 2016.

In response to queries, a solicitor for Northside Apartments says it owns about 65 per cent of the flats, or around 80 units.

None of the units were purchased from any member of the Hutch family, solicitor Darragh Mackin of Belfast-based Phoenix Law says.

“To our clients’ knowledge, no unit has ever been owned by, or let to, any member or associate of the Hutch family,” he adds.

Northside Apartments is entirely owned by Shantar, a company apparently named after John McCann’s two daughters Shannen and Tara. Company records show the two women are the ultimate controlling parties of both Northside Apartments and Shantar. Neither the companies or the women have any links to criminality.

Macken, the solicitor for Northside Apartments, who also represents John, Tara and Shannen McCann, says in response to queries that “any rectification notices served on the company were promptly rectified and no tenant of the company’s apartments were evicted on foot of any such notice”.

He says the company has no responsibility for the apartments owned by other parties.

Despite John McCann’s financial troubles, the investment in Buckingham Village appears to have paid off in the end. In 2017, the flats owned by Northside Apartment were valued at €492,000.

When the holdings were revalued in 2018, their value had increased to almost €5 million, financial accounts show. This valuation has remained the same, according to the company’s 2025 accounts.

It was a remarkable turnaround.

Previous valuations of some of the apartments owned by McCann in the complex put them at €15,000 each. One filing in 2007 records two apartments in the complex as having a value of zero.

[ ‘We are just about holding it together’: Overcrowding, mould and rats in Ireland’s social housingOpens in new window ]

McCann’s solicitor says the change in valuation “reflects a revaluation to fair market value by the company’s accountants” and the purchase of additional apartments in the block.

“Dublin residential values rose very substantially between the 1990s and 2018, and nothing unusual is to be read into it.”

The solicitor also says that no officer of Shantar or Northside Apartments has even been interviewed by gardaí investigating the Regency shooting. The same goes for John, Tara and Shannen McCann, he says.

Since the Regency attack and the ensuing feud, millions of euro of public money has poured into the north inner city. Various building projects, youth schemes and outreach programmes, along with extra policing, have contributed to a renewed sense of pride and stability in the area.

Some lamp-posts around Buckingham Street have been painted gold, to mark the Kellie Harrington’s Olympic medal win in the 2024 Olympics. Harrington began her boxing career in Corinthians Gym, just around the corner from Buckingham Village on Bella Street.

[ Club where Kellie Harrington began boxing career ‘inundated’Opens in new window ]

Around another corner, on Buckingham Street, is the childhood home of Irish soccer hero Troy Parrott, who recently moved to Real Betis in Spain in a €20 million deal.

On paper, the rejuvenation has also been seen in the housing complex itself. Since 2024, the number of prohibition notices issued by the council for Buckingham Village has dropped dramatically. Currently, just one flat in the complex, number 89, remains on the prohibition list. This is not owned by the McCann family or their companies.

Belinda Nugent, of the Inner City Organisations Network, says there has been significant work completed on some of the apartments but the complex still requires massive refurbishment. “That work is not being carried out.”

It is also not clear whether all the apartments removed from the prohibition list have been refurbished.

The council spokesman says prohibition notices can be rescinded when a property is removed from the rental market, without being refurbished. If a property subject to a notice is sold, the entire enforcement process must begin again.

The view of the tenants

Buckingham Village has changed over the years. Today, most tenants are foreign nationals, mostly from China and eastern Europe. Nugent estimates that less than 10 per cent of residents are Irish.

One-bedroom flats are offered for rent online for €1,800 a month. The average purchase price is €65,000, up from €10,000 a decade ago.

Some of the apartments are missing door handles. Others have no numbers. In some of the windowless hallways, the lights do not work, leaving them are in permanent darkness. Furniture fills many of the hallways, along with children’s toys. Nugent estimates about 50 of the residents are children.

Despite its size, the complex rarely comes to the attention of local politicians.

“I’ve never had one query out of there,” says Nial Ring, the local councillor.

“For a flat complex that means people either don’t want to engage or don’t know how to engage. The people haven’t got a voice yet. They’re just happy to have accommodation.”

When The Irish Times visits Buckingham Village to speak to residents, most of the time, no one answers the door of the apartments, leaving it unclear whether they are occupied. Sometimes a resident answers but indicates they cannot speak English.

“It is scary sometimes,” says one eastern European tenant who does not wish to give their name. “I don’t like walking up the stairs at night.”

Another woman says her complaints about the condition of her apartment are regularly ignored.

[ The Irish Times investigation: The Oireachtas farmers: who are the largest landowners in Leinster House?Opens in new window ]

“It is very damp in the kitchen ceiling,” she says.

She is not aware that there is a process for making complaints to the council. She says her neighbours are “lovely people” and she does not worry about crime.

During one visit, a woman asks what we are doing there before telling us we are on private property. She agrees to answer a few questions. She says her name is Kitita, that she is originally from Latvia, and that she has been managing Buckingham Village for many years, dealing with any issues the tenants may have.

“Everything is all right. People are friendly,” she says while standing in the doorway of Number 56, which serves as the security office and official headquarters of Northside Apartments.

“A couple of months ago one family was making trouble. A family moved out. But people are friendly.” Sometimes the gardaí come," she says, “but not every day”.

All but two of the 125 flats are occupied, with two or three people each, she says.

“There are a couple of landlords, but Northside Apartments owns most of the flats.”

She knows Gerry Hutch. He visits sometimes, as do his relatives.

“I am friendly with him,” she says. “He is friendly with me.”