Fate of Westport House hanging in the balance

Neill O'Neill

WHILE the fate of Westport House and Estate is now very much out of the hands of the Browne family, last week’s economic report shows the value of the house and estate to the town, county and wider region to be in excess of €50million.
According to Sheelyn Browne, her late father Jeremy Browne (Lord Altamont), who died last year, had always believed this to be the case.
Speaking to The Mayo News this week, Sheelyn, Managing Director of Westport House, said that the economic report shows that her family have been doing something correct for the last 55 years.
Sheelyn explained that only very recently has Westport House been able to financially support itself, and that prospects for the future were indeed looking much brighter. However, with their loan in NAMA, and now in the ‘Project Arrow’ portfolio, there is a huge unknown hanging over her family - who have held Westport House in private ownership for almost 400 years.
“We can speak as a family about how important Westport House is, and this new report highlights something we have always known, yet for all of that time Westport House has struggled, even while the economy exploded in a positive sense on the outside.
The estate never made any money and everything my father ever had, and everything it made, went back into the estate. This document [economic report] is living evidence that what he did, and what we are still doing now, is creating a lot more around Mayo, and helping Westport as a tourist destination, which is what he set out to do originally.”

Loan
While not delving into financial details, Sheelyn stated that their loan is not a secret, and was taken out around 2006 when her father was at ‘another cross roads’.
“There were three choices, sell during the Celtic Tiger years, keep going the way we were, which was nowhere  because we could not employ a professional team to take Westport House where it needed to go, or take a loan and try and create a master plan to secure the future of Westport House for the next 50 years. This is what the choices were, and there was a loan taken.
“Every cent can be accounted for, it was either put back into the estate for development or used to employ professional people, which we needed to do. We have been dealing with the financial situation for many years but now it is coming towards the end of the process and we expect to know our fate in several months time.”
The burden brought to bear in keeping the house and estate open has been very tough on her family, and Sheelyn has no doubt that it took its toll on her late father.
“The last three years have been a complete nightmare. We have the NAMA issue and then my father became ill. He had put his whole life into this place and suddenly he was told he was dying and when you have put your whole life into something, that is an awful way to end it. He knew there would be difficult times ahead, he knew the loan was there, he didn’t know, as we still don’t, what the future would be, but when you have worked so hard on something your whole life and think you are doing a good thing, and then you get sick and it comes to an end like that, and there is nothing he could do, that was extremely tough on him.
“My father put his whole life into Westport House. When he was told he was sick, and later dying, he carried that knowing very difficult times lay ahead for the estate and our family, and in the end that must have been devastating for him. Our loan was not taken in a speculative fashion, it was necessary to implement a plan for the estate and employ professionals to help bring us where we needed to be, where we now are, or else we faced having to close or sell, which we always wanted to avoid. My family [mother Jennifer and four sisters] live a simple life. This estate is the Browne family, we don’t have yachts in the south of France or homes across Europe, my parents were very modest, everything they had went back into this estate. We turned over €1.8 million in 2013, which is not a huge amount for an estate this size, and over €700,000 of that went on wages. We have had struggles, my father threatened to take a sledge hammer to the house in protest over the wealth tax, and he would have. Our whole lives have gone into Westport House, and in six months or so the next chapter for us all and for Westport House will be revealed.”

Growth
Since 2009 visitor numbers at Westport House have grown 82 percent, something Sheelyn calls ‘phenomenal in the deepest recession we’ve seen in decades’. She describes it as a very positive development but notes that it has taken 55 years to achieve.
“It is beginning to lift and we feel that it is just now about to take off and the potential of the estate is huge. We have this master plan now, it is ready, we are coming back to relative normality after the recession and the potential is there to bring the estate to a completely different level.
“There is a perception that there is a lot of money here and people see crowds and think ‘they are cleaning up down there’ but with an estate like this you need a vast amount of money, it needs huge investment, new attractions, you have to change, evolve and grow.”
Sheelyn accepts the reality that there is no way of knowing what the future for Westport house is going to be. In an ideal world, she says her family would like to see Westport House continue to grow and develop, but acknowledges that this ‘relies at this minute on so many things that are completely out of our control’.
However, Westport House is open for business and staff are busy planning for Halloween and Christmas and looking ahead to 2016.
“We don’t want people to think we are suddenly closing down, because that isn’t happening. We are very positive about the business and where it is and its potential, but yes there remains an awful lot that is the unknown.”

Process
Speaking frankly, Sheelyn said that her family are not sitting on piles of money, nor are they looking to abscond from their financial liabilities or have their debt written off. She added that waiting on the unknown is a horrible place to be.
“Our loan was taken in peak times and was small by comparison with others at the time, but then you have this chain of events such as land value collapsing so it was difficult to start selling anything or paying it back. The value of the estate cannot just be about the value of some fields, but this new economic report shows that the value of the estate, particularly to the local economy, is an awful lot more, it is almost intangible. I don’t know if a figure can be put on it, the history of this town is in Westport House, and one of the reasons dad and the rest of us continued through unbelievably tough times, was because it was about saving one of the most important heritage properties in the country.
“The chain of events that have happened are unfortunate. It could be too late for intervention from outside, we need to let it play its course, we saw what happened with NAMA in the north, and people are asking questions now about it. The way these deals are structured it is only super wealthy people who can bid for them, it isn’t giving Irish people a chance to be involved. So there are plenty of people asking if NAMA are doing the right thing for the country, I am not going to get into the politics of NAMA, and everyone has their own set of problems and situations to deal with, but it is awful what has happened to many people, and to many businesses, over the last number of years.

Probate
While all this is going on, the Browne family are also in a probate process, following the death of Lord Altamont last year. The probate process and the administrators for Jeremy Browne’s estate have nothing to do with NAMA, but Sheelyn says they are trying to carry out her father’s wishes in the best way they can, aside from the complications of NAMA.  The reality is that on paper, the liabilities wipe out the value of the estate.
“We all thought dad had another ten years, he probably thought that himself. He was a relatively fit man, there was nothing wrong with him one minute and the next he was sick, and things happen in life but when that happens in a situation like this, there is a probate process that takes place - which we are in - and that is being handled by the administrators of his estate who have to bring it out the other end, and in the middle of it all we have NAMA, and to be honest everyone on the streets knows about Westport House and NAMA, we are with NAMA and there is a process NAMA are doing and that is now out of our control, that is being dealt with by the administrators of dad’s estate.
“One of my biggest regrets is that dad did not see this economic report, it is an endorsement of his life’s work. It might have taken 55 years but we have finally got the business to run at a point where it is viable to do so, and the great tragedy is that just as we got to that point, control for the future is being taken away from us. We are not hiding anything, we should know over the next few months, but at the minute we don’t know what is going to happen, and it is a very difficult situation to be in. We have been here for so many years, Westport House is in our DNA.”