The Mayo News

News Feature Recent revelations about Michael Lynn seem very much at odds with his Crossmolina upbringing.


The west’s modern-day playboy

The revelations that have come out in recent months about solicitor, Michael Lynn, seem very much at odds with his upbringing in Crossmolina

Aine Ryan

BET the script is already being drafted. The denouement already imagined. The ghost of John Millington Synge’s Christy Mahon is exhumed. So too is James Carney’s James Lynchehaun, central character of The Playboy and the Yellow Lady.
Apparently, Synge’s Playboy of the Western World was inspired by the actions of the notorious Achill man, who fled to America after attacking the Yellow Lady (Mrs Agnes McDonnell) and burning down her colonial house in 1894. Lynchehaun’s case made legal history when he managed to evade extradition after pleading that his actions were politically motivated.
It is unlikely that Mayo man, Michael Lynn, will have recourse to similar justification as the bounty for his apprehension increases. One thing is for sure though – like Lynchehaun and Mahon – he has achieved a certain notoriety. Begorrah and bedad, he is surely the Celtic Tiger’s Playboy of the Western World.
There was little sign of the Celtic Tiger when Michael Lynn was born in the small north Mayo town of Crossmolina in the late 1960s. Rural Ireland was still shrouded in the dark days of peasantry; still shackeld with the collar of clericalism. Éamon de Valera was still in the Áras and Jack Lynch had just recently taken over from Sean Lemass as Taoiseach.
The youngest of five children born to the late Hugh Gerard Lynn and his wife Angela, he grew up on a 100-acre farm on the edge of Lough Conn and in the shadow of Nephin. Educated at Crossmolina Boys’ National School and later at the convent of Jesus and Mary, Gortnor Abbey, he is generally remembered as a ‘popular’ and ‘bright’ boy, with a passion for Gaelic football and music.
Who would have guessed that the well-behaved and pleasant young boy who entered the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association’s annual Readóirí (talent) and GAA’s Scór na nÓg competitions would have achieved such a level of infamy before the age of 40.
Michael Lynn’s rise to the status of ‘infamous’ has been nothing less than meteoric. Most of us had never even heard of him before mid-October last when media reports began to reveal the complicated quagmire of his illicit property empire.
Initially, we heard that a Dublin law practice had been closed down by the High Court because it had used clients’ monies for personal dealings. The sole solicitor who ran the firm at Capel Buildings was named as Michael Lynn, whom it emerged owned 105 properties, a significant number of which were in nine different countries, including Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and China. It also emerged he had drawn down loans of over €26 million in 2007 alone.
Of course, this was only the tip of the fast-melting property empire as it was revealed he had taken multiple mortgages on numerous properties with several banks.
Nonetheless, at this juncture, it appeared that Lynn intended co-operating with the Law Society’s inquiry. He gave an undertaking to the court to list all his properties, including details of any mortgages owing on them, and, moreover, he would make them available to be sold to cover his liabilities.
Reflect on that picture and RTÉ footage of him, the clean-shaven solicitor – donned in a pinstriped suit and baby pink patterned tie – and hand-in-hand with his 34-year-old, Clare-born wife, Brid Murphy. Sure butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Was he already plotting his path of escape as he walked towards the High Court on that October morning?
Of course, if we had been keeping an eagle eye on the legal watchdog website, www.rate-your-solicitor.com, Lynn’s propensity for shady property deals may have come to light much earlier.
Over a year before his first outing in the High Court, on September 4, 2006, a Paul Cooney wrote: “This guy conveys property alright but the fees are astronomical and he’d cut your nose off for a penny. Advice: Cheque (sic!) every inch of your invoice (although he takes cash) and never lodge money with him as his client account funds his property deals.”
Cooney continued: “He runs a property development company selling apartments in Spain/Portugal. Buy a block of 20 for one million and sell each unit for 250,000 (plus VAT and outlay).”
The following day, September 5, 2006, a man called Alan further substantiated these claims, suggesting that ‘it would not hurt the law society to ensure that there was no conflict of interest arising from his property dealings’.
As the Irish property boom soared, Michael Lynn found himself in the right place at the right time. He had his own practice, specialising in conveyancing and property development. He also had those vital ingredients of ambition, ability and charm. One of his first foreign forays was a development of 272 apartments in Portugal which, after a high-profile marketing evening in Galway, took off. The world was soon his oyster as he expanded his interests into Bulgaria, Hungary, the US and China.
As his misguided dream grew more expansive he involved his sister in December 2006 when she gave him €250,000 for apartments in Prague. During the same month, a former schoolmate from Crossmolina invested €1.4 million. The previous year, he had cajoled former Mayo GAA star, Willie Joe Padden into a directorship of  his foreign property company, Kendar. Padden had the good fortune to end the professional relationship with Lynn within six months. It wouldn’t be until the whole sordid story broke though that he discovered his resignation had never been registered at the Companies’ Office.
It’s hardly surprising that the tightly-knit north Mayo community of Crossmolina is absolutely stunned by the ongoing revelations about one of their own. In shops, pubs and garage forecourts the silence is deafening about the errant solicitor. The sale of his Howth house, Glenlion, by the banks last week drew nothing more than a nod here and a muffled whisper there.
There is a palpable sensitivity to his mother who, by all accounts, is devastated about her son’s antics. “You know that woman went to Mass every day of her life. I feel very sorry for her and the family. They are very well-respected and liked,” says one local.
Another reason that locals don’t want to talk about Lynn is ‘because there is a feeling out there that more people [in the area] were caught out by him’ and supported his schemes, than has reached the public domain. “We feel pretty cagey about the whole thing,” says one man, summing up local feeling.
As well as being a passionate GAA fan during his teens, Michael Lynn was also mad into music. He and Eurovision singer, Marc Roberts, became a regular fixture at church weddings in Crossmolina, with Lynn playing the organ and singing along with Roberts.
Roberts recalls that this continued up until the late eighties when Michael returned home for holidays after his first couple of years at Trinity College, where he began studying law in 1987.
They subsequently grew apart due to their different professional choices and the last time Roberts saw Lynn was at a concert, in which he featured, in the National Concert Hall about two years ago. It was one of the few times he had met him in over a decade.
Even though Lynn no longer spent much time in Mayo after college, he became an active member of the Mayo Association in Dublin in the mid-1990s. After he resigned from the committee, he continued to attend functions such as the Mayo Person of the Year awards.
Last week the High Court referred the Lynn case to the DPP to decide if criminal charges can be brought against him. The previous week he had been briefly stopped in Newark airport but because there are no criminal charges issued against him, or related warrant, he could not be detained.
So then, could it be that Lynn, like Lynchehaun, has found a convenient loophole in the law? And, worse still, like Pegeen Mike, could we have lost forever the only true Celtic Tiger playboy of the western world?

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