A co-founder of a company which builds solar farms has claimed in the High Court that efforts have been made by other shareholders to \u201cerase all trace\u201d of his role in the firm.<\/p>\n
Marcus Price founded Soleire Renewables Holdings Ltd along with Patrick Joseph McCarthy in 2017 with a 60\/40 split between them. <\/p>\n
Price, whose investment was as sole shareholder in a company called Glas Valley Investments Ltd, became managing director and McCarthy, who invested as sole shareholder of a firm called Conradh Gl\u00e1s Teoranta, became project manager.<\/p>\n
Price claims that as a result of an alliance forged between \u201ca disgruntled\u201d McCarthy and a new investor, Germany-registered ILOS IRE Invest GMBH, and other members of the board, unlawful steps have been taken to transfer control from the founders in flagrant breach of governance and in a manner oppressive to him (Price). <\/p>\n
Since the involvement of ILOS, it has become a 49 per cent shareholder with Price and McCarthy holding 51 per cent.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Judge Brian Cregan granted barrister Andrew Fitzpatrick, with Stephen Brady, for Price, an interim injunction until next Tuesday restraining the board from making any decision in relation to the affairs of the company and in particular in relation to the replacement of Price as a director. The application was ex parte, meaning only the plaintiff was represented. <\/p>\n
The proceedings are brought by Price\u2019s Glas Valley firm against ILOS, Conradh Gl\u00e1s, McCarthy and other Soleire directors Mark Varian, Nikolaus Krane and Michael Winter. Soleire is a notice party. <\/p>\n
The respondents deny the claims. In a response to a \u201cletter before action\u201d, Varian, MD of associated ILOS company, ILOS New Energy IRE Holdings Ltd, and recently retired partner in Eversheds Sutherland solicitors, refuted all the allegations including that Price was wrongly removed as director. <\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick told the judge that Varian had been orchestrating the campaign against his client. He said Price had not been invited to a number of corporate events and there was an \u201cOrwellian situation\u201d where Price\u2019s name had been removed from the company website in an attempt to erase him from history of the company. <\/p>\n
In an affidavit, Price said there had been \u201ca sustained, focused and wilful campaign\u201d to conduct the affairs of the company in a manner demonstrably oppressive to him. The effect of the sustained efforts by the respondents to exclude him was to the ultimate benefit of ILOS and to the detriment of him and the company, he said. <\/p>\n
He said the genesis of the breakdown in the relationship between him and McCarthy began when McCarthy sought to contend that his company Conradh Gl\u00e1s was entitled to an equal share in Soleire. <\/p>\n
After that McCarthy sought to align himself with directors nominated by ILOS and making his (Price\u2019s) role untenable and ostracising him. Price said that throughout 2025 he had growing concerns that he was being systematically excluded from material matters including new projects and company finances. <\/p>\n
He said he was actively excluded from emails and phone calls and in mid to late 2025, his access to the ILOS portal was removed. <\/p>\n
He said that following correspondence in which he alleged oppressive conduct, which was denied, he decided that the best path forward was not to litigate but to work with McCarthy and ILOS with a view to bringing projects to tender. <\/p>\n
He attended a board meeting on February 17th last which he recorded using an artificial intelligence tool because of his previous concerns and because he said he was dyslexic and diagnosed with attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which meant his notetaking was poor. <\/p>\n
He went to the bathroom during the meeting and the recording revealed to him that his concerns about collusion between McCarthy and Varian were well founded. He later told one of the other directors, Krane, about the recording.<\/p>\n
It was then resolved to call an extraordinary general meeting (egm) to remove him as director because of the covert recording. He was unable to attend that meeting due to travel commitments and a request to postpone was rejected. The vote to remove him was passed. <\/p>\n
A request to allow Price\u2019s nominee to replace him was rejected on the basis that both founders had to agree to the replacement which Mr Price disputed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A co-founder of a company which builds solar farms has claimed in the High Court that efforts have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[73246,79,18,19,17,24696],"class_list":["post-587392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bryan-obrien","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mam"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}