Controversial landlord Marc Godart rented rooms in Dublin city centre to foreign nationals running small businesses using CCTV cameras to monitor a rental system that included per-customer commission.
The tenants, from China and Brazil, who ran beauty salons and a barber shop in rooms on the upper floors of number 6 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2, entered into the agreements with Mr Godart thinking he was the landlord and not knowing the owners of the building were trying to throw him out.
The tenants who spoke to The Irish Times on Thursday did not want to be named but said they paid €700-€900 per month for their rooms and supplied Mr Godart with details of how many clients they had seen. This information, they said, was checked against the CCTV footage that monitored clients entering their rooms.
The owner of the building, Irish property company Richmond Gate Ltd, had been writing to Mr Godart’s company, Green Label Properties, since late last year advising that the four-year, nine-month lease Green Label had on the third and fourth floors of the building expired in December and asking Mr Godart, who did not have permission to sublet the rooms, to leave.
However they got no response and on Wednesday morning took possession of their property by erecting a steel door blocking entry to the top two floors. They also removed all the CCTV cameras that Mr Godart had installed.
The beauticians and barber who spoke to The Irish Times on Thursday said they had entered into arrangements with Green Label Property Management Ltd this year, not knowing that the owners of the building were trying to get Mr Godart to leave.
[ Owner locks controversial landlord Marc Godart out of leased propertyOpens in new window ]
Their arrangements included paying a deposit equal to one month’s rent and signing agreements in a solicitor’s office in Dublin. The agreements described Green Label as the “owner” and outlined a commission arrangement that would apply to their tenancy.
One tenant said he paid rent of €900 per month and only began to pay commission on top of that if the number of clients exceeded a certain level. Another said they were told that the commission charged each month would be the equivalent of their agreed rent, €700 per month.
A contract with one beautician says she “will pay a commission based on the number of clients served during the term of this agreement”, which is for the first trial month of her tenancy.
The stated commission per client is €11 but a formula is also included in the agreement: 11 x number of clients x number of working days in a month, with the minimum number of days being 22. Any day with less than three clients is “considered to have three clients for the purpose of commission calculation”.
“If the beautician doesn’t pay the commission within seven days, it will accrue interest at a rate of 3 per cent per month from the due date until payment is received,” the agreement says.
During the trial period, commission adjustments may be made “based on the beautician’s business performance”, the agreement says. If false information is provided about the number of clients seen, the agreement will be terminated “immediately”.
The Irish Times has previously reported on the use of CCTV cameras to monitor residential tenants who were renting rooms from Mr Godart. A request for a comment from him about the CCTV cameras in the Westmoreland Street building met with no response.
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