{"id":673575,"date":"2026-09-05T07:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/673575\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T07:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:52:14","slug":"give-them-no-hope-rathwood-messages-show-continued-involvement-of-keogh-brothers-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/673575\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Give them no hope\u2019 \u2013 Rathwood messages show continued involvement of Keogh brothers \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Keogh brothers, who ran troubled retailer Rathwood<\/a> before it went into examinership last April, remain heavily involved in the company and are in regular communication with the new owners about the day-to-day running of the business. <\/p>\n

The continuing involvement of James and Thomas Keogh comes after Rathwood\u2019s sale to a consortium headed by Kevin Nolan, who runs a Cork-based corporate advisory firm.<\/p>\n

An extensive series of internal messages seen by The Irish Times indicates the Keogh brothers have been involved in discussions about which employees should be kept on or let go and how certain creditors and the business should be managed in the wake of a dramatic fall from grace in recent years.<\/p>\n

Complaints about Rathwood\u2019s inability to fulfil orders first emerged in mid-2025, with Rathwood\u2019s problems deepening last winter. In April the company went into examinership, after which it emerged that about 7,000 customers had bought products from Rathwood that were never delivered, with close to \u20ac3 million owed. <\/p>\n

In July the High Court<\/a> approved a \u20ac750,000 rescue scheme<\/a> which saw Nolan and a consortium taking over. Customers owed money were promised refunds of just 0.25 per cent.<\/p>\n

Confirming the scheme, Judge Rory Mulcahy said the manner in which the business had been managed before its examinership remained of \u201csignificant concern\u201d and he noted liabilities of more than \u20ac21 million when it entered examinership. <\/p>\n

Keith Farry, for the Keogh family directors of Rathwood, told the court his clients were undertaking not to act as directors of the company for a period of five years.<\/p>\n

They have remained involved, however, and in one exchange between James Keogh and Nolan last month, Keogh suggested a redundancy package for some staff of \u20ac5,000 was a \u201cclever\u201d move. \u201cGive them no hope, only 3 days a week or \u20ac5,000,\u201d Keogh told Nolan. He suggested staff might simply choose to leave \u201cif they know there is NO hope of the big pay-off\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Rathwood receives more consumer complaints than RyanairOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In another piece of correspondence, James Keogh dismissed an employee suggestion that the retailer\u2019s popular Christmas experience should involve local market stalls and craft markets and said such stalls were a \u201cwaste of time and never pay\u201d. He dismissed \u201ccraft people\u201d as \u201cpainful\u201d.<\/p>\n

Keogh also said employees were \u201cscared\u201d of the new chief executive, \u201cwhich is ideal\u201d.<\/p>\n

In another sequence Keogh outlined how various staff should be treated, with \u201clet go\u201d or \u201creally needs to go\u201d appearing after some names.<\/p>\n

In another exchange Keogh said a supplier was said to be \u201cdesperate to get back on track\u201d.<\/p>\n

In response Nolan said the desperation was \u201cno harm, we keep it sweating until early next week. You get to play the Kevin card; \u2018he\u2019s not happy etc but you\u2019re trying to get it sorted\u2019,\u201d which was answered with a \u201c100 per cent\u201d emoji from Keogh.<\/p>\n

Many serious conversations, including some in which the Keoghs and Nolan discussed how little some creditors would be getting back as a result of the examinership process, were peppered with emojis including crying\/laughing faces and devils.<\/p>\n

In response to queries from The Irish Times Nolan said he had \u201cdrawn on the knowledge and experience of the inherited Rathwood management team, including James and Thomas Keogh, to understand the business and support its transition\u201d and added that \u201cgiven the complexity of the business and the circumstances in which it emerged from examinership, that was both necessary and commercially sensible\u201d.<\/p>\n

He insisted that since his consortium acquired Rathwood \u201cthe business has been under my full control\u201d and he stressed that neither of the Keogh brothers had any \u201cownership, control or decision-making authority within Rathwood\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that views or recommendations were expressed in private Slack exchanges does not mean those individuals made the decisions, nor should my failure to challenge every comment be interpreted as agreement with the language used. Decisions on staffing, suppliers and the operation and future direction of Rathwood rest with me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He also said he rejected \u201cany suggestion that seeking information and operational assistance from people with long-standing knowledge of Rathwood was contrary to the restructuring approved by the High Court. Evergreen owns Rathwood, I control the business and all material decisions are made by me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both James and Thomas Keogh were contacted for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Keogh brothers, who ran troubled retailer Rathwood before it went into examinership last April, remain heavily involved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,10476,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,191283,7,8],"class_list":["post-673575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-rathwood-home-and-garden-world","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117217352111932597","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673575","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=673575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}