The list of payments to providers of accommodation for people claiming asylum in the state has just been published this morning. Right at the top of the list again is Cape Wrath owners of Citywest who pocketed more than €17 million in the three months between July and September.
I also see companies who Gript has shone the light on figuring prominently. Among them the D Hotel in Drogheda; Banty McEneaney’s Brimwood; Gateway Integration who have the East Wall centre; Seefin Events who are involved in the controversial Kippure Estate; the ironically named Holiday Inn, Travelodge, and so on. But do not fret if I do not mention you here. I shall be back.
To put the overall figures in context, back in 2009 the cost of asylum accommodation was a mere €44.2 million when there were just 6,879 people in IPAS centres. That had risen to €650 million in 2023.
The total costs for last year have not yet been released but were estimated that they would come to just under €2 billion, and in March last year Minister Roderick O’Gorman was given an estimate of €5 billion for refugee beds over the next 20 years. An absurd underestimate surely as numbers in IPAS accommodation reached almost 33,000 at the end of December.
We do know one thing and that is that the best side of the equation to be on in all of this is as the corporate or domestic or front owner of an hotel that is taking thousands of tourist beds out of one of the key economic sectors. One that as we have detailed before from industry reports has had a hugely negative impact both upon availability and pricing.
Not to mention the damage it is doing to smaller local businesses which are taking a hit when tourists are unable to find somewhere to stay in places that are dependent at times of the year on visitors from home and overseas.
One of the new kids on the block did jump out at me. This being Brava Capital who make their first appearance in the charts, so welcome sirs. Always a pleasure for us Paddies and Patsies (how appropriate do you not think?) to help out our neighbours from across the water. For such is Brava Capital.
They clock in with a not-to-be sniffed at €7,601,220.12 (€7.6 million) which they received for providing international protection accommodation with four separate payments in July and August.
The company had been in the news in Summer 2023 when it was reported that they had acquired student accommodation in Sligo which they intended to use instead as an IPAS centre.
That attracted controversy, and in August that year local Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan announced that the Department was no longer proceeding with that plan. It would seem, however, that Brava Capital has managed to find other places in which to lay the heads of persons charged to our account by the state.
You will find no such company called Brava Capital registered with our own Companies Registration Office (CRO). There are two Brava Capital companies whose records can be found registered with the UK Companies House. One was registered in February 2023 and is listed as an overseas entity with an address in the Isle of Man.
There are no details of directors and in its February 2024 return it is stated that “The entity has identified one or more registrable beneficial owners and that it has no reasonable cause to believe there are others, and that the entity is able to provide the required information about each registrable beneficial owner it has identified.”
There are no details given of who the beneficial owners are. In the Isle of Man records the two current directors are David Michael Johnson and Colin Malcolm Williamson. The company agent is Sterling Trust.
There is also another Brava Capital which some people believed was the company that had been granted the planning permission for the student accommodation in Sligo but had intended to use it instead to accommodate asylum seekers. That company was struck off in May 2024 and although that was overturned last June it would appear to me that it is the less likely candidate to be the one drawing down the accommodation cheques.
I am not certain but what is clear is that whichever Brava Capital has drawn down the more than €7.6 million it is a company that is not registered in the Irish state, that is not owned by any other company based in the Irish state and that we do not know who the actual ultimate beneficial owners are because which whichever Brava Capital it is happens to be registered either in the Isle of Man or in the Cayman Islands.
I cite this for the reason that it demonstrates two things.
Firstly, that the amounts being paid out are showing no sign of decreasing. And secondly that this is proving to be an increasing attraction to overseas companies that recognise an easy Euro when they see it. A Euro that in the case of whichever Brava Capital is now dipping its beak in your pocket will be winging its way into a bank account far from the place it was turned over.
We shall be examining the latest payments in more detail and be providing you with more of the details of who owns what, and so on.