Ken Fennell
Also known as: Kenneth Fennell, Kavanagh Fennell (accountancy business he founded with Tom Kavanagh); companies Deloitte Services Unlimited Company and Deloitte Unlimited Company
Linked to 12 companies
There are 98 RTB cases linked to a man called Ken Fennell. He has the dubious honour of being the one of the most-named individuals in RTB cases alongside fellow ‘insolvency practitioners’ Stephen Tennant and Tom O’Brien. There are several landlords with more cases than him, but they’re all companies.
Who is Ken Fennell?
An accountant by trade, in 1997 Ken co-founded accountancy firm Kavanagh Fennell with his colleague Tom Kavanagh. They specialised in ‘Corporate Recovery and Insolvency’ - managing the accounts of companies and businesses in financial trouble. During the economic crash and recession in Ireland they got a lot of work, as a lot of companies ran into financial trouble.
Kavanagh Fennell merged with Deloitte in 2014, where he worked until 2022 when he moved to consultancy practice Interpath Advisory where he now works as managing director. By the time he started working for Interpath Advisory, he was one of the "best-known insolvency practitioners in the country" according to The Currency.
From the vaults: The people and issues in Ireland’s accountancy sector - The Currency
Under Irish law, insolvency appointments are granted to individuals and not firms. Over the last 15-odd years, Fennell appears to have been busy working away as an insolvency practitioner or ‘receiver’ for a whole range of different employers.
So how is he a top evictor?
Ken is a receiver, rather than a landlord. This is an important distinction, but still a confusing one that has led to significant stress and hardship for tenants across Ireland - and for landlords too.
What does a receiver do?
When a company (or a person) is in financial trouble, one option is to appoint a receiver, Investopedia defines it as:
“neutral third-party entity who works on behalf of the company and its creditors to secure mutually beneficial agreements.” This is often an alternative to declaring bankruptcy, as the receiver tries to make back some if not all money that’s owed.
Receiver: Definition, Legal Role, and Responsibilities - Investopedia
The economic crash in Ireland resulted in a huge amount of people with mortgages being unable to keep up with their repayments to the bank. And some of these people were landlords, using the rent they extracted from tenants to pay back their mortgage. Receivers, Ken Fennell being one of them, were then appointed by the financial institutions and NAMA to manage and repossess properties.
Why does he show up in so many RTB cases, if he’s not a landlord?
“When receivers are appointed to a property in arrears, they effectively take control of the property and dealings with tenants, and, in practice, the receiver administers the property until it is sold. But receivers are not landlords and their obligations towards tenants are unclear.”
Housing financialisation and the creation of homelessness in Ireland - Maynooth University
Receivers are bad news for both landlords and tenants.
When a receiver takes control of a rented property, the landlord often has a difficult time letting go. There are many cases where the tenant is caught in the middle of a struggle between the two.
Legally, a tenant is required to pay rent to the receiver of the property they live in, and the receiver is required to communicate this very clearly with the tenant. But it’s often very unclear who the tenant should contact for other issues, such as maintenance of the property.
There are several RTB cases where Ken Fennell took a tenant to the RTB and the original landlord of the property attended the case as a representative or witness for the tenant - for example, case 0418-42674 from Co. Wicklow and case 0422-76520 from Co. Kildare, where the unfortunate tenant is told he must pay €24000 in rent arrears to Ken Fennell, as he had apparently been paying the former landlord for almost 4 years - after this former landlord “advised the Respondent Tenant not to pay rent to anyone calling to the dwelling”. The tenant almost invariably loses in this type of situation.
Report of Tribunal Reference No: TR1218-003407 / Case Ref No: 0418-42674 - RTB
Report of Tribunal Reference No: TR1122-005832 / Case Ref No: 0422-76520 - RTB
If a tenant is receiving Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), the switch from the landlord to receiver can cause problems as the paperwork can take some time. A tenant in Tallaght was awarded €3000 damages after Ken Fennell accused her of not paying her rent to him, when in fact the fault was with the office that handled her HAP payment, who continued to pay the former landlord. While she was trying to rectify this mistake and have the payment switched to Fennell’s office, he refused to carry out maintenance to make the house safe for the tenant and her family. There were issues with the wiring and a hole in the ceiling, and the floorboards needed fixing - her baby had cut his feet on them. She was told that “nothing would be done until the rent was sorted”
Report of Tribunal Reference No: TR0718-003123 / Case Ref No: 0418-43120 - RTB
n 2021, Fennell’s agent evicted a tenant in Cork while the tenant was out of the country, without any attempt to give him notice. The tenant had travelled abroad due to a family emergency, and when he came back found all his belongings gone. He was offered €600 “as compensation for his personal belongings”.
Report of Tribunal Reference No: TR0322-005370 / Case Ref No: 1021-73502 - RTB
Knowing what we do about how a receiver operates, you’d be forgiven for wondering if they allow rent arrears to accrue as a tactic to evict tenants. This is probably impossible to prove.
Receivers like Ken Fennell are of course part of a system where housing is a commodity, rather than a basic social right or need. The property market in Ireland, and the banks and lending institutions that prop it up, prioritise making a property sellable. When the receiver wants to sell the property to recoup the unpaid debt, they will almost always get more money for it if it is vacant. Selling the property improves the financial status of the banks.
Researchers have studied the impacts of the financialisation of rental housing over the period 2013-2022. This was the period when receivers like Ken Fennell were extremely busy with the repossession of properties, many of them rented. They consider the system of repossession and receivership to be a key cause of homelessness in Ireland:
“This large-scale receivership of BTL (buy-to-let) properties in the context of very weak tenant protections in the Irish rental market, is highly likely to have made a contribution to rising homelessness in this period…The Irish Government was unwilling to act to stop or ameliorate the tenant insecurity and displacement in BTL receiverships and repossessions which was creating homelessness.”
Housing financialisation and the creation of homelessness in Ireland - Maynooth University
If you are a tenant whose home is in receivership, we recommend you read A Residential Tenant's Guide to Receivership and consider joining CATU.
Residential Tenant's Guide to Receivership - Banking & Payments Federation Ireland