Well-known publican and restaurateur Jay Bourke has been declared bankrupt by a High Court judge over a €558,000 debt to the Revenue Commissioners. 

Judge Brian O’Moore made the order after hearing details of the bankruptcy petition from the Revenue. 

He was told that Mr Bourke was consenting to the order being made. 

The debt relates to a capital gains liability stemming from the sale of the Bodega bar in Cork. 

Mr Bourke will now have to file a further statement of affairs to the Examiners Office of the High Court. 

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The court has heard that the businessman, who once employed more than 1,000 people, racked up total debts of €13.7m, and now faces the loss of his €1.4m family home in Rathmines, south Dublin. 

Confirmation of his bankruptcy has been published online by the courts service. The petitioner was stated to be Joseph Howley, Collector General for the Revenue, and the adjudication for Mr Bourke, of Rathmines, Dublin 6, was dated on Monday. 

The High Court was told that his tax debt dated back to the Celtic Tiger years. 

The judge heard that Mr Bourke had attempted to offset the proceeds from the sale of Bodega against the gain against the decline in the value of other assets that he owned. 

The biggest of these was Bellinter House, the boutique Co Meath hotel he bought in 2003 for €2.3m with the late music promoter John Reynold, which underwent a €16m refurbishment before opening in 2006, at the height of the Celtic Tiger. 

Their operating company went into liquidation four years later, and the hotel was sold on in 2016 for around €3m. 

However, his attempt to offset his capital gain against those losses was not accepted by the Revenue, or by the courts, after he appealed the tax liability. 

The Revenue later petitioned the High Court to have him adjudicated bankrupt over the outstanding tax debt. 

Mr Bourke recently tried to win High Court approval for a personal insolvency arrangement (PIA) writing off €12.2m in debt. 

That was supported by the Revenue, which was set to be repaid in full, and would have enabled him to avoid bankruptcy. However, it failed due to objections from another creditor, Pepper Finance. 

Pepper Finance complained that it would have recouped just €65,000 of the almost €12.3m it is owed. It said it would fare better if Mr Bourke was made bankrupt. 

It also argued that Mr Bourke and his wife should not get to keep their valuable home, due to the scale of the debt. 

In a recent interview, Mr Bourke said he was not going to oppose the Revenue’s renewed pursuit of his bankruptcy. 

He said: "I’m not going to fight it. I fully accept that I owe the Revenue some money from a capital gain, from 2006, which we tried to offset against other capital losses.  

"We had three appeals with the appeals commissioner, and also went to the High Court, and we lost that, so that means that it crystallises, and you have to pay it…so I suppose I am going to make an attempt to pay it and do a deal with the Revenue and that will be that."

He said he had found the whole legal and bankruptcy process "incredibly unpleasant" and stressful. He said he was ending his 56th year with nothing to show for the years of hard work he had put in. 

However, he added: "You have to put everything in context. We are not fleeing our homes. Millions and millions of Ukrainians have lost all their possessions and their homeland and their culture and they are scared to death, that certainly hasn’t happen to me."

Mr Bourke opened his first restaurant, Wolfman Jack’s in Rathmines, in 1989, before building up an empire that included Rí Rá nightclub, The Globe bar, the Front Lounge and Eden restaurant in Dublin, as well as Bodega and the Savoy in Cork, the Garavogue bar in Sligo, and the Café Bar Deli group. 

He has blamed his downfall on the economic crash and property leases which contained upward-only rent reviews. 

In 2017, he was disqualified from acting as a company director for seven years following the liquidation of the former Shebeen Chic pub on South Great George’s Street in Dublin. 

He told The Irish Times last year he was seeking an insolvency deal after his income was ‘decimated’ by Covid-19 restrictions. 

Mr Bourke’s personal insolvency application said he "played his part in changing the culture of Dublin and elsewhere" by opening LGBT venues that were "deeply involved" in the same-sex marriage referendum.  

It said that his "endeavours in the restaurant business were equally revolutionary".

+Reporting by Helen Bruce