How accommodating refugees has become a lucrative business for hotels

The second largest hotel operator in the country, the Tifco group, was paid more than €80 million under State contracts to provide accommodation to Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers from other countries.

The highest-paid private providers of accommodation were identified following an analysis by The Irish Times of logs of more than 3,500 payments made by the Department of Integration last year.

Large hotel groups and companies involved in running direct provision centres received tens of millions of euros in contracts last year, as the State struggled to source shelter for more than 60,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war with Russia, as well as some 20,000 asylum seekers from other countries.

Figures show Tifco Ltd, the Irish hotel business owned by US private equity group Apollo, was paid at least €37 million by the department to lease rooms in its hotels for accommodation.

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Directors of the Irish company include: Enda O’Meara, Tifco chief executive; Brian Campion, chief financial officer; and Patrick Mabry of Luxembourg-based asset management firm Lapithus. Accounts for Tifco’s Irish holding company state its parent entity is incorporated in Luxembourg.

[ Companies paid tens of millions of euro to accommodate refugees ]

The department separately paid €25.8 million to accommodate asylum seekers and Ukrainians in Travelodge hotels, which are owned by Tifco.

The group was paid a further €20.5 million last year under a contract where it provided an entire new 393-bed Travelodge hotel on Townsend Street, Dublin 2, for the State to use to accommodate asylum seekers. The payments were made to Pumpkinspice Limited, a company set up by Tifco to develop the city centre hotel.

Tifco did not respond to requests for comment on its contracts with the department.

The second highest-paid company, Tetrarch Capital, received at least €34 million to accommodate asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees, according to the department’s figures.

The payments were made to Tetrarch’s company, Cape Wrath Hotel UC, which owns the 764-bed Citywest hotel and connected convention centre.

The convention centre has been used as a transit hub run by the department, where Ukrainians and asylum seekers are processed before being moved to other accommodation.

The company’s latest financial accounts state it had agreed to licence the entirety of its southwest Dublin hotel and convention centre to the department for a period of at least two years.

A spokesman for Cape Wrath said the hotel accommodates 1,700 asylum seekers and refugees a night.

The transit hub has been at full capacity since the start of this year, with more than 650 asylum seekers in the facility, where some men have been left sleeping on chairs for up to a month before securing a mattress.

With delays prolonging the amount of time asylum seekers spend in the centre before being moved to more long-term accommodation, tensions have risen inside the facility, with fights breaking out on a number of occasions.

The scale of the operation at the Citywest site was “significant”, with about 7,000 meals provided daily between the hotel and transit hub, Cape Wrath’s spokesman said.

The company would continue to “work very closely and positively” with the department, “to ensure that the campus runs as efficiently as possible in what is an unprecedented situation,” he said.

The UK-based JMK Group received at least €17.2 million from the department to accommodate asylum seekers at its Holiday Inn Dublin Airport hotel.

The hotel group, run by Pakistani-Irish businessman John Kajani, closed the 421-bed hotel to the public at the start of last year, to lease the entire facility to the State.

Alongside hotel groups, many of the highest paid companies were those already involved in the direct provision system, the two-decade-old network of mostly privately-run centres providing accommodation to asylum seekers.

Brimwood Unlimited, a company owned by former Monaghan GAA football manager Séamus McEnaney (55) and his daughters Sarah (24) and Laura (30), was paid €23.8 million by the department last year.

The company, set up in 2019, quickly established itself as one of the department’s biggest providers of accommodation for asylum seekers.

Last year Brimwood ran about a third of “emergency centres” set up in recent years to provide extra capacity, as traditional direct provision centres reached capacity.

The significant number of people continuing to arrive in the State has meant many of the emergency centres have become fixtures of the direct provision system.

Like many of the other large providers Brimwood is registered as an unlimited company, meaning it does not have to file annual financial reports detailing its internal finances.

However, the amount it is paid annually by the department in accommodation contracts has increased by more than €8 million, from the €15.7 million received in 2020.

Mosney Unlimited, one of the biggest providers of asylum seeker accommodation, was paid €15.8 million by the department last year, figures show.

The company houses several hundred asylum seekers at a former holiday resort in Mosney, Co Meath. Drogheda-based businessman Phelim McCloskey (78) bought the site in the 1980s and it has been used as a direct provision centre since the inception of the system in 2000.

Since then his company has been paid some €170 million by the State to house asylum seekers, department records show.

The Irish company is ultimately owned by Sonning Unlimited, a company registered to a post box in the Isle of Man.

The other directors of Mosney are: Paul McCloskey (48), from Julianstown, Co Meath; Sarah Gates (45); and Ruth Kierans (41), from Drogheda.

The department had refused to disclose the identities of the highest-paid private providers of accommodation in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

The Irish Times sought to establish the largest providers by analysing logs of hundreds of department payments above €20,000 made last year, which the department is required to publish on a quarterly basis.

The figures were put to each company., None responded to contest the amounts reportedly paid by the department.

Hotelier Patrick Coyle’s Windward Management Ltd was paid €14.3 million by the department last year. Mr Coyle, who previously ran the Gresham Hotel, owns 99 per cent of the company, which specialises in managing hotels for clients.

Bridgestock Care Ltd, a company that runs several direct provision centres, received €14.7 million from the department last year. The company has been a provider of accommodation to asylum seekers since the early 2000s.

The vast bulk of payments from the department related to direct provision centres, while it received €480,000 to provide accommodation to Ukrainian refugees.

Michael Gillen (63) from Tonaphubble, Co Sligo, is Bridgestock’s chief executive and chair, while Séamus Gillen (56) from Tullamore, Co Offaly is its other director.

The company is ultimately controlled by Gillen Investments Limited, which is owned by six members of the family.

Latest financial accounts show Bridgestock recorded a profit of €3.8 million in 2021, with a further €2.5 million in earnings carried over from previous years.

The company expanded to provide accommodation in Belgium following the increase in asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean in 2015. A separate entity run by Séamus and Michael Gillen, Bridgestock Unlimited, is registered in the British Virgin Islands.

BC McGettigan, a company run by Brian and Ciara McGettigan, of the Irish family-owned McGettigan Hotel Group, received €12.1 million to accommodate Ukrainians and asylum seekers at its Address hotel chain.

Some hoteliers have complained about lengthy delays receiving payments from the department, as civil servants have worked through backlogs of huge volumes of invoices.

The reliance on tourist accommodation has also led to multiple instances where Ukrainians and asylum seekers have begun to put down roots in a local area, only to be moved to a different corner of the country as the department’s contract with a provider came to an end.

A department spokesman confirmed contracts to accommodate Ukrainian refugees had to be cancelled in a “small number” of cases due to notices issued over potentially dangerous fire safety conditions.

There is also a concern among department officials that hotels may be less likely to renew contracts to provide accommodation during the busier tourism summer season.

[ Fáilte Ireland calls for change to approach on refugee accommodation ]

However, many of the highest-paid providers have held contracts with the State since the system of direct provision was set up more than 20 years ago.

East Coast Catering (Ireland), which is owned by the Isle of Man-based entity Glentramman Unlimited, was paid at least €9.5 million by the department to provide accommodation last year.

The company won an initial contract in 2001 to run the Balseskin reception centre, near Dublin Airport, where asylum seekers were initially housed before being moved to direct provision centres or accommodation elsewhere.

Records show it has been paid more than €100 million through State contracts over the last two decades.

Two of the company directors are based in Canada – Patrick O’Callaghan (80) and Mathew O’Callaghan (45) – while Denis Williams (58) and Killian O’Grady (53) live in Dundalk.

Another long-established provider, Millstreet Equestrian Services, was paid €14.7 million by the department in 2022 to run several direct provision centres in the south of the country.

The company, whose ownership structure is registered in the Isle of Man, is run by Thomas Duggan (56) and Hannah Duggan (58), from Millstreet, Co Cork.

Two years ago Millstreet Equestrian Services was rolled into a new company set up by the pair, Cromey Ltd, whose parent entity is registered in Malta.

The Duggan family are heavily involved in the horse sports industry and run the Green Glens equestrian arena in Cork. Temporary accommodation for more than 300 Ukrainian refugees was set up in the arena, as one of several large-scale sites to meet increasing demand in the weeks after the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

Companies connected to Derek Scully (63), a businessman who lives in Lucan, Dublin, were paid €14.8 million by the department last year, figures show.

[ The Irish Times view on housing refugees: Government’s credibility is suffering ]

His company, Heronwell Limited, which was set up in January 2022, was paid at least €9 million to accommodate Ukrainian refugees.

Mr Scully is also a director of Coziq Enterprises Ltd, which was paid €4.5 million to accommodate Ukrainians and asylum seekers, and Codelix Ltd, which received €1.2 million in payments.

US multinational Aramark’s Campbell Catering Ltd, which provides catering services to several direct provision centres, was paid €7 million by the department last year.