Mick Wallace’s Italian Retreat

This article was first published on 13/03/2011

“I have no secret stash and no lavish lifestyle” – Mick Wallace.

Indebted developer Mick Wallace makes an unlikely TD… and his neighbours in Turin and Cortemelia certainly agree

By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor

I’M wondering who you are going to scare the most – the banks or the creditors or the people who elected me,’ muses Mick Wallace, as he orders a plate of spaghetti al olio and a bottle of Valpolicella in his own Wallace Taverna in Dublin’s Italian quarter.

He had been asked about his reportedly lavish boom-time lifestyle, jetting to and from his vineyard in Italy and paying his children hundreds of thousands of euro in salaries.

It’s the charge that he’s living it large while owing tens of millions to the banks that rankles with Ireland’s most colourful new TD (motto: work hard, play hard, life’s short). Nor, after just two days on the job as a tyro TD, does the soccer-mad developer from Wexford seem entirely at ease as poster boy for the motley crew of independents that dominates one side of the Dáil chamber.

For certain, he hasn’t yet mastered that political reality, ‘the optics’. While Fine Gael and Labour spent last week haggling over the shape of our new government, Wallace was in Italy indulging two of his great loves – the country itself and its Serie A football.

In fact, he’s a man who seems to have more than one of everything: homes, countries, professions, restaurants, football teams – even families.

Though he married only once, he has four children from two relationships. He married Mary Murphy – a local woman from Duncormick, Co. Wexford – in 1979. And despite the fact that he owes €40m to the banks, in excess of €1m to creditors and would lose his Dáil seat if declared bankrupt, he describes the break-up of his marriage 22 years ago as his darkest day.

‘The toughest time was when my marriage broke up. That’s tough, you know. The woman I married was a very good woman and we were very close and all and it was very tough on the kids. But that’s just the way it happened.

‘We probably grew apart. It’s very difficult.

The kids were still very young. But you know, they’re 29 and 27 now and they both still live with me. They’re fine. They have a very good relationship with their mother and they have a very good relationship with me.’

So they should. As his opponents are quick to point out, eldest son Sasha took a salary of €289,000 from the Wallace empire in 2008, the latest year for which accounts have been filed, as did Wallace himself.

‘That figure may seem high to you but I took a salary of €40,000 the year just gone out. You probably made more than that yourself. There is a perception that every developer siphoned off the system and has made a nice lump sum somewhere, but that is not the truth with me.

‘I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth – I have not been siphoning money out of the system. Any money that’s there has gone towards things like mortgages that have to be paid.

‘Most of the salary I’ve been taking is going towards paying mortgages and I’m struggling to do that. So anything I take from the Oireachtas, I’ll be using it to pay bills.’ One place it won’t be going, though, will be to support the mother of his other two children, Gráinne and Joe Barry-children, Gráinne and Joe Barry-Wallace, the fruit of the relationship he began in 1991 with Dubliner Patricia Barry.

He says: ‘We went out for a couple of years in the early 1990s. We’re still on good terms and she’s a good friend of mine.

‘She’s a secondary school teacher with her own income and she doesn’t rely on me for anything.’ Asked whether there is a ‘partner’ on the scene, there’s a long pause.

‘I’m not on the dating scene. Mick Wallace is shacked up with his two sons in Fairview and that’s it,’ he says, referring to the above-menby tioned Sasha and 27-year-old Fionn. The pair, who appeared alongside him as he won his seat in Wexford, once hit the headlines for being expelled from secondary school for smoking cannabis – and he freely admits having tried a joint or two himself in the past.

‘I’ve tried it but it doesn’t do a lot for me. I prefer a pint of Guinness or a glass of wine,’ he says.

‘But I don’t think it’s very logical that hash is illegal. It’s a big industry controlled by criminals and the way the hash arrives at the client’s door isn’t always the way it should be. If it was legalised, they could control the quality of it, they would get taxation on it. It’s a no-brainer for me.’ was legalised, they could control the quality of it, they would get taxation on it. It’s a no-brainer for me.’ With or without cannabis, though, he does like a party. He even had to get permission from the local council for the shindig that he threw to celebrate the completion of his vineyard, with 400 guests. He’s on the defensive again.

With or without cannabis, though, he does like a party. He even had to get permission from the local council for the shindig that he threw to celebrate the completion of his vineyard, with 400 guests. He’s on the defensive again.

‘It was a good party and we thought it was a good way of getting to know the people in the village,’ he says.

‘It was a good party and we thought it was a good way of getting to know the people in the village,’ he says.

‘It wasn’t a lavish thing. It was a great party, right, but people paid their way,’ he hastens to add. Now, he ‘It wasn’t a lavish thing. It was a great party, right, but people paid their way,’ he hastens to add. Now, he insists, he doesn’t even own the vineyard.

‘I had to sell it to a creditor – who happens to be my brother. I owed him €550,000 and I sold him the vineyard. It’s not something I wanted to do but he was going to get nothing for the €550,000 worth of material that I had got from him for construction work.

I still go down there. But I don’t enjoy the fact that I had to sell it and I did offer it to other creditors who didn’t want it. They were holding out for the hope that they’d get money and hopefully they will.’ If that smacks of a David Drumm or Seán Dunne-style transfer, Wallace points out that the Revenue has accepted the validity of the deal, reached a repayment agreement with him and issued him with tax clearance certificates for his businesses. Meanwhile, those villagers in Cortemilia whom Wallace got to know at his unlavish party were astonished to learn their neighbour had become an elected politician.

‘I haven’t seen him for a few months and I had no idea that he was an MP – I shall have to ask him the next time I see him,’ said ironmonger Claudio Zarri.

‘He’s a very friendly guy and what always makes me laugh is no matter BALANCING ACT: Mick Wallace owes more than €40m but owns five restaurants in Dublin’s Italian quarter what the weather is like here – and it can get cold – he is always in a shortsleeve shirt or T-shirt.’ A two-hour drive away in Turin, Wallace owns another property – a fourth-floor, city centre apartment a few minutes’ walk from the famous Mole Antonella, the tallest brick structure in the world, and the Porta Palazzo, the largest open-air market in Europe.

Bought a decade ago for an estimated €90,000, this is his base for indulging in his passion for Italian football. Until his financial woes hit, he retained season tickets for AC Milan, Juventus and Torino.

But, ever sensitive on the issue, Wallace denies that his passion amounts to profligacy.

‘People think that because you go to Italy that’s a big expense. All you pay is the tax. I mean, the prices are €1 for the flight. You can buy a season ticket for €200 in Italy,’ he protests.

In Turin, too, neighbours were bemused that the straggly-haired Irishman is a member of parliament.

‘That’s complete news to me – I had no idea. Will he have to cut his hair?’ asked one occupant of the building who asked not to be named.

‘I saw him a few days ago and we said hello but that was about it. I don’t even have a number for him or I would call and congratulate him. I have spoken with his sister a few times as he has been burgled three times and I had to get her over,’ added the woman.

That sister, Mary Wallace, lives in a large home overlooking Turin. It was she who introduced him to Italy when she put him up during Italia 90.

He was hooked immediately. ‘I love the football, I love the food, I love the wine, I love the relaxed atmosphere. It’s a different place and it has its own problems too. If Italy could sell problems, they’d be worth a fortune,’ says Wallace.

‘But in general, they have a higher standard and quality of life. They have far less money but they eat well and they drink well and I just think there is less hassle in their lives.’ It’s the ‘dolce vita’ philosophy and Wallace seems to have taken it to heart. Nothing seems to faze him – not even the massive scale of his debts and the prospect of losing everything. Indeed, his remarkably fatalistic attitude extends, apparently, to a certain unconcern about the details.

‘I swear to God I don’t know,’ he says when asked how much he is paying his banks back monthly.

‘Oh God. I’d only be guessing,’ he apologises when asked how big the monthly wage bill is for the 50 staff who man his five restaurants.

‘To be honest, it doesn’t scare me.

No. I would be disappointed if it falls apart and I know it can. It would be hugely disappointing for me. I have built with great pride this street, for example. I own all this street.

‘It’s probably 50/50 as to whether the banks will continue working with me. They have been working with me for the past three and a half years but it’s possible that if the banks were in a healthier position themselves that they might just shaft me.’