Businessman Robbie Fox has blamed the ESB for shutting down his restaurant in Saggart, Dublin, while it was still trading.

With three out of his four businesses in liquidation but still operating, Fox says it was the state electricity supplier and not creditors who closed down restaurant Brown's Barn. The restaurant, on the Naas Road, ceased trading on 28 May with the loss of 25 jobs.

The 52-year-old said: "We hadn't been paying our electricity bill on time but giving them bits and pieces to try and keep us going.

Matters came to a head when we got a final warning from the ESB saying they were going to cut us off. I think at the time we owed them €14,000."

Fox claims one of his staff contacted the ESB to offer the company part payment in order to keep the restaurant open.

"The ESB told us they couldn't make any promises but asked the money be sent over.

"We sent a cheque for €2,000, which is all I could afford at the time. The next day the ESB turned up anyway to cut off the power. I rang them and said: 'Surely you are not going to turn off our power and put 25 people out of jobs?' The woman I spoke to said she would have to talk to her supervisor but he wasn't back until 3pm.

"When I asked if the power could be kept on till 3pm, she refused and they closed us down.

"It was just before we served lunch and there was enough food in the restaurant for 100 people. All of it went to waste. I thought it was disgraceful the way the whole thing was done."

Fox said he is "gutted" at the collapse of his businesses, which include nightclub Renards, Temple Bar restaurant Tante Zoé's and Bray restaurant Barracuda.

At a creditors' meeting last Monday it was disclosed the total shortfall across the four businesses is more than €6.6m, which Fox claimed was the result of a drop-off in trade caused by a change in drinking laws which forced late-opening clubs to stop serving an hour earlier.

A spokeswoman for ESB said: "ESB has a long track record of dealing in a very fair way with customers who are experiencing financial difficulties. We always try to reach an accommodation. Disconnection is a last resort and exercised after every reasonable effort to reach agreement."

Meanwhile, restaurant owner Ronan Ryan – whose restaurants include Town Bar and Grill and Bridge Bar and Grill, both in Dublin – said his businesses would stay open after an unnamed investor agreed to put €500,000 into them.