Willie O'Leary
Also known as: O'Leary International Unlimited Company, Oli Property Rentals Limited, O’Leary International Transport Ltd and 16 other companies.
“Millionaire businessman” Willie O’Leary is owner of the one of the biggest private haulage firms in Ireland, O'Leary International. Based in New Ross in Co. Wexford, the firm boasts over 500 trucks and trailers used to transport food and other goods across Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe (with operations bases in Poland and the UK).
A well-known name in his native New Ross, Willie O’Leary is also a prolific landlord with properties and development sites across Wexford and at least one in Kilkenny.
Council approves plans to expand housing estate in county Kilkenny - Kilkenny Now
In 2013 he was convicted of forging a will with fellow Wexford businessman Noel Hayes. They were both given 3-year jail sentences, but were let out on bail as the judge considered them too important to serve time as they “had a ‘great number of employees’ dependent on them in their various businesses”.
Millionaires freed on bail over forgery of a €1.7m will - Irish Daily Mail (pressreader)
One site O’Leary owns is Hookless Village, a development of 48 holiday home properties built in the mid-1990s near Fethard-On-Sea, a popular holiday destination.
About Us - Hookless Holiday Homes
In recent years O’Leary made headlines when he advertised one 3-bedroom property in the Village for a rent of €3,000 per month. That seems extortionate even by Irish housing crisis standards, but O’Leary felt he was being short-changed. He told papers:
“the property would make €5,000 a month if it was a holiday rental… it accommodates nine workers within three bedrooms.”
During the recession, he “bought several buildings at relatively cheap prices” and began renting to long-term residential tenants. In most of his complexes, he would leave “a few rooms” free for short-term holiday lettings.
€5m investment boost for New Ross - Irish Independant (archive version)
One building, Barrow Hall in New Ross, cost him roughly €123,000 in 2015 - not bad for 32 apartments, with one of them recently advertised for €1,395 per month.
Barrow Hall, Mountgarrett, New Ross - Property Price Register Ireland
Barrow Hall, Mountgarrett, New Ross - daft.ie (archive version)
A tenant living in Barrow Hall reported appalling maintenance issues in an RTB case:
"There was no running hot water in the dwelling for over a year, there was damp, there were broken floor boards... part of the ceiling had fallen down on their young child... a shower door was broken... the Landlord had never once fixed anything… he stopped paying rent because the Appellant Landlord had promised to fix items and had not done so".
Report of Tribunal Reference No: TR0523-006253 / Case Ref No: 1122-81441 - RTB
Clearly full of sympathy, in 2022 O’Leary complained to the press: “When a tenant has a problem he or she is non-stop ringing you”.
These days, he finds renting to be “a pure waste of time”, threatening to stop developing properties for rent altogether, once he’s finished his Kennedy Plaza development in New Ross: “If I could get someone to buy all of my property, I would sell it.”
One thing he finds so difficult about being a landlord these days is the tenants:
“it’s too difficult to get tenants out… some people don’t go and they go to the PRTB. They find in favour of me and it goes to court but the court won’t throw them out and people stay in your house for years.”
Another bugbear for O’Leary is government taxes on developers:
“The rents are sky high because the government are taking half of it. That is why everybody is getting out… After tax, you might be left with €450 and that is only if the property is perfect and is rented 100pc of the time. It doesn’t pay to build a house and rent it at all. It’s a loss-making situation.”
This could be part of the reason he’s diversified again. In 2022, he branched out into the extremely profitable business of refugee accommodation, taking a contract to house 250 Ukrainian refugees in the Hookless Holiday Village and Kennedy Boutique Hotel.
Since 2022, his company Oli Property Rentals Ltd has been paid €3,647,481.71 by the government for housing Ukrainian refugees. Sources for this figure can be found here: