Investigating a ruthless rental empire

The Irish Passport

Society & Culture

4.8 • 652 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2025

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Naomi spent months investigating a rogue landlord who built up an empire of rental properties in Ireland backed by family wealth in Luxembourg. In this episode, we tell the story of Marc Godart: his back story, the controversial evictions that brought him to prominence, and the unusual ways he runs his businesses. This is based on reporting by Naomi and her colleagues at the Irish Times that was recently awarded the Mary Raftery Prize for social affairs journalism. The winning story is here: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/01/13/under-the-eye-of-landlord-marc-godart-how-a-tenant-who-objected-to-cctv-surveillance-was-evicted/ You can read more of Naomi's reporting here: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2024/02/17/working-for-marc-godart-paper-directors-shadow-airbnb-accounts-ruthless-staff-practices/ https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/04/15/the-luxembourg-family-behind-an-irish-property-empire/ Bonus episodes are available for supporters over on www.patreon.com/theirishpassport

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
0:02.3	Let's do it.
0:03.1	Welcome to the Irish Passport.
0:04.8	I'm Tim McInerney.
0:06.0	I'm Naomi O'Leary.
0:07.0	We're friends.
0:07.7	Can you both to Naomi?
0:08.5	Anoir fat, Tim.
0:09.9	This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics.
0:13.2	Uh-huh.
0:13.4	I'm recording.
0:14.2	One, two, two, three.
0:16.6	Okay.
0:42.6	Hello everyone and welcome back to the Irish Passport podcast where it's a very special one today, Naomi, because you won a prize.
0:46.5	You want a big prize, actually. I won a journalism prize, yes. Thank you, Tim.
0:53.3	Tell us, for those of us who aren't up to speed with the journalism prize scene, what did you win and for what?
0:59.8	So myself and two colleagues at the Irish Times were awarded the Mary Rafferty Prize for Journalism. So it's an award in Ireland that recognises journalism on like social issues. So the
1:05.9	story that we won it for was this expose and investigation that I led which was into a landlord in Ireland
1:15.4	and how he treats his tenants and we particularly focused on the case of a tenant who was evicted
1:21.1	because he objected to CCTV cameras that were recording inside his property so that was the nuts and bolts of the story, but I guess the bigger picture is that it kind of,
1:33.2	it showed how people are vulnerable to exploitation in the current situation of the housing
1:41.1	market in Ireland, which is so severe with prices so high and such a
	...

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