JP McManus profile: Enigmatic billionaire’s GAA handout has once again drawn attention to his tax affairs

In rare public remarks many years ago on his tax status, billionaire racehorse owner and gambler JP McManus insisted he was doing the State “more good” by earning his fortune abroad.

JP, as he is known, is in the news yet again after giving €1 million each to 32 GAA county boards, an extraordinary move that has left clubs in a state of anticipation as Christmas approaches. But the €32 million Gaelic games handout has drawn more attention to the tax affairs of Limerick hurling sponsor, who runs his business empire from Switzerland.

“With philanthropy you get to fund your pet projects,” said Social Democrat TD Jennifer Whitmore, who was quick to acknowledge the money was welcome for the GAA.

“But the purposes of paying tax is to pay for fundamental public services, things like sewage, water services, education and health, services that may not be as PR-friendly but upon which the country is run.”

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Labour TD Ged Nash made a similar point. “Whatever pleasure I might take in seeing my beloved local club benefit from an unexpected windfall is more than tempered by the fact that this particular Santa Claus is tax-resident in Switzerland.”

A spokesman for McManus declined to comment when asked about such remarks. Neither was the question mentioned when the GAA issued a statement thanking McManus and his wife Noreen for their “remarkable gesture of support” for the organisation.

It was in University of Limerick 12 years ago in the heat of the State’s worst economic crisis that McManus hit back at critics of tax exiles who said successful business people were not doing their patriotic duty by paying tax in Ireland.

“I didn’t leave the country in order to avoid paying a tax, or to avoid paying a future tax that was about to come down the line. I paid my taxes and I set up a business abroad,” he said.

[ What each GAA club will receive following JP McManus’s €32m donation ]

McManus insisted he was proud to be Irish, saying he was improving the State by spending money in his homeland. “If I was somebody who set up a business abroad and it didn’t go so well I’d be considered an emigrant; if it goes well I’m considered an exile.”

With a fortune counted more in billions than millions, McManus once lost a US court action to recover $5.2 million (€4.7 million) in tax withheld from his winnings on a three-day backgammon match.

Although he one of best-known faces in worlds of sport and business, he is not a man to say much publicly and maintains the kind of silence that would a make a monk proud.

Champion jockey AP McCoy, who had a long and fruitful relationship with McManus as racehorse owner, once told of advice he received from his then boss: “Imagine all the fish who’d still be alive if they’d learned to keep their mouth shut.”

There are several dimensions to the McManus sporting story, of which his GAA affiliation is but one. The latest donation comes five years after he gave €100,000 to each county board to mark Limerick’s All-Ireland hurling victory in 2018, the first in the county’s recent run of success after a 45-year drought.

[ Gordon Manning: Other sports will be left envious wondering ‘why is it always the GAA?’ ]

With more than 4,000 winners to his name on the racetrack, the green and gold hoops of McManus riders cannot be mistaken. In the golfing arena he scored a spectacular coup with a deal to host the 2027 Ryder Cup tournament at his 842-acre Adare Manor resort in Limerick.

All of that is more than enough to cement his status as a heroic local chieftain, although he remains something of an enigma. But it says little of a working life that began driving a bulldozer for his father’s earth-moving business and led, eventually, to the trappings of billionaire lifestyle with a private jet, a helicopter and luxury properties.

One of his main areas of interests is currency trading. Yet little is known about the day-to-day scale and scope of the enterprise, apart from the fact that he has made lots of money: enough to shower the GAA with €32 million in a single day; and enough to give €103 million over 20 years to his charitable foundation.

McManus, a close associate of bloodstock billionaire John Magnier, has interests spanning real estate and UK nursing homes, pubs and restaurants. He and Magnier realised a €125 million profit on the 2005 sale of their Manchester United stake to US billionaire Malcolm Glazer. The Glazer takeover followed a well-publicised legal battle the pair fought with former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson over stud fees on champion racehorse Rock of Gibraltar. The case was settled, on terms advantageous to McManus and Magnier.

Former Manchester United player Roy Keane later said he advised Ferguson to back down in the case. “Somebody I met in Ireland had told me to tell him: ‘You are not going to win this.’”