By Michael O’Farrell & Craig Hughes
A creche owner caught watering down milk to increase profits is a substantial landlord with property worth more than €5m across Dublin, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Hyde & Seek owner Anne Davy (Pictured right) who is evading angry parents and trying to escape media attention, also owns a number of rental properties in the capital.
In addition to the €2m in profits earned at a number of creches, the creche founder has made tens of thousands of euro annually from rents in Dublin, dating back a decade.
The MoS understands that Mrs Davy, 64, left the country for a time this week, after protests were held outside her creches. Another protest was threatened at her home on Dublin’s northside yesterday.
Investigations by gardaà and Tusla, the child protection agency, are also under way.
In addition to €2m worth of residential property, the companies listed in Mrs Davy’s name also have €3m in commercial property, as well as plant and equipment assets, according to the most recent accounts filed.
The residential property includes a six-bed and a four-bed house, both worth more than €400,000; an apartment in the city centre estimated to be worth over €300,000, along with a car-parking space, also rented out; and their own period property home, which is worth more than €800,000.
In an RTÉ Investigates documentary aired this week, Mrs Davy – an industrial cleaning superviser by trade – was filmed handling a child roughly and admonishing staff who were being nice to children.
‘This is a business – it’s not a babysitting. It’s not a one-to-one,’ an irate Mrs Davy is seen telling an employee. The programme also featured footage of her ordering staff to lie by fabricating log-book entries to deceive parents into believing their children had been doing various activities.
Mrs Davy rents out multiple rooms to tenants in houses near her period Glasnevin home.
The city-centre apartment she and her husband Peter own is on Kings Inns Street and there is an enclosed parking space that is rented separately, for €120 a month or €1,440 a year.
The apartment was first advertised in 2009 for €1,200 but rents are expected to be higher a decade on. It is not known whether it is being rented out now.
The Davys’ home on Lindsay Road in Glasnevin was bought in 1995, when it was described as a ‘spacious red-brick period residence’ with two reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, four bedrooms and a large rear garden and garage. It is now worth an estimated €800,000.
The Davys moved there from a four-bedroom house around the corner in the Dalcassian Downs estate, and this property is now rented out. It was bought in 1990 when the family sold up and moved to the city from Mulhuddart, in north-west Dublin.
In 2010, Mrs Davy advertised ‘a single room to share with two other men’ there. The rooms were €330 a month at the time. Homes in the Dalcassian Downs estate were selling for €287,000 in 2013, but will now be worth substantially more.
When the MoS called there this weekend, a tenant confirmed Mrs Davy was his landlord and said four people were living there.
A six-bed home owned by the Davys – on Clonliffe Road, near the Tolka Street Hyde & Seek creche she runs – appears to be rented out. A tenant who answered the door yesterday said he would not answer questions about his ‘landlady’ or confirm how many people were living in the house. This home is worth more than €400,000.
In 2014, single rooms here were fetching €55 a week including bills. Planning files reveal that, in 2007, many locals complained to Dublin City Council that Mrs Davy had ‘illegally run an after-school minding facility in the house for some time until halted by the enforcement officer in the council’.
The complaint, supported by then TDs Tony Gregory and Joe Costello, also spoke of the property being used as a ‘hostel’ and referred to ‘disturbances caused by unsociable tenants’.
The planning file indicates that when the council enforcement officers inspected the property they found no evidence of illegal activity.
The Davys had hoped to build a substantial new creche and rental accommodation on the site of the Clonliffe Road property but their plans were rejected by planning officials in 2007.
In addition to their rental income, the Davys have earned substantial profits from childcare activities.
Between 2014 and last year, profits at Hyde & Seek Childcare Ltd amounted to almost €2.75m, money which the Davys have said was reinvested in the creches.
During the same period, the firm received €1.25m in taxpayer-funded Government subsidies. Hyde & Seek runs four creches: on Tolka Road in Dublin 3; Millmount Road in Drumcondra; Glasnevin in Dublin 9; and Shaw Street in the south city centre.
A fifth is being developed. Mrs Davy first began operating childcare facilities in 2001. Some business filings list her as Elizabeth Anne Davy, while her maiden name is Anne E McCabe.
Her husband Peter – a production manager – is also a director and 25% owner of the business.
Their daughter Siobhán is a director and 48% owner of the company’s new purpose-built facility in Glasnevin.
Since 2001, Mrs Davy has changed trading names three times after negative publicity relating to her creche facilities.
Giggles Creche and Montessori was adopted as a business name in October 2001 before a 2005 prosecution led to an avalanche of publicity relating to a child in her care left behind in a park.
After the case, Giggles Creche became Just 4 Kids in the summer of 2005, before becoming Hyde & Seek in 2012, when the business became a limited company for the first time. Despite the name changes, the problems continued.
Earlier this year, the Hyde & Seek company pleaded guilty, at the Dublin District Court, to the non-registration of the firm’s newest creche in Glasnevin.
In a statement this week, Hyde & Seek said the behaviour and care standards seen on the RTÉ programme ‘does not reflect who we are,’ and added that Mrs Davy had stepped aside from all frontline care activities.
As Garda and Tusla investigations commence, the firm is moving to hire an independent consultant to review its management structure and has begun the process of recruiting a new manager for the Tolka Street creche, until now run by Mrs Davy.
In 2005, Mrs Davy, the company’s majority owner, was fined €1,200 for failing to provide adequate safeguards and supervision for a child who was left behind by a member of staff during an outing to a public park playground.
The three-year-old child was left at Fairview Park in July 2004 while attending Giggles Creche and Montessori on Tolka Road in Dublin 3, run by Ms Davy.
Ms Davy was also convicted of not providing adequate safeguards in accordance with her insurance and of not having adequate staff and attendance records.
In 2013, she told The Irish Times that she had not been involved directly in the incident, but she was convicted because she was the owner of the creche.
‘My past is there. I have worked hard to get where I am,’ she said. No response was received from Mrs Davy at the time of going to print, after numerous efforts to contact her regarding these issues.
