Among the beneficiaries of the plum deal that the owners of Citywest have secured, we note the interest of a company called Bramrokey. Readers will recall that Citywest was recently purchased by the State for €148.2 million – to add to the approximately €200 million previously received in accommodation payments.
According to the latest information from the Companies Registration Office (CRO), Bramrokey owns 2.67% of Alva Glen Investments which is the holding company that owns the Citywest lands and the hotel and buildings. These will continue for the foreseeable future to be used to provide asylum accommodation.
Alva Glen’s ownership of the land means that they will also continue to accrue payments for the accommodation of refugees at the CityArk Hotel, also known as the Golf Hotel. That is not included in the sale and will continue to draw down payments.
2.67% may seem a trifling share but it is one that has been worth millions to the owners of Bramrokey since Citywest began to be used as an accommodation centre and including the proceeds of the sale.
The owners of Bramrokey are Philip Airey and Tina Airey who both have a 49.5% share and Jalama Investments Limited which has a 1% share. Jalama is wholly owned by Tina Airey. Besides its share in Alva Glen, Bramrokey also has a 2.4% stake in MJBE Investments whose directors are Michael McElligott and Damian Gaffney who are both involved in Citywest and Stephen Grant of Grant Engineering.
Bramrokey reported net assets of more than €4 million at the end of 2023. Apart from their lucrative share in Citywest, the Airey’s main earner is their ownership through Jalama of Sunway Travel which was founded by Tina Airey’s grandfather Roy Beatty in 1966.
They also had two other travel companies; Priority Travel Service, which was voluntarily struck off in May this year, and Wings Abroad, which was struck off just two weeks ago.
Sunway has been tremendously successful and in its last financial report it posted turnover of just under €41 million for 2023, up from €34 million in 2022. Gross profits were also well up to €5.6 million.
All signs of the revival of overseas travel following the lockdown during the Great Covid Panic. Mind you the owners of Citywest also did well out of that because they managed to get a nice juicy contract from the ever beneficent State/taxpayer to use the former tourist hotel as a Covid quarantine centre.
It was reported in June 2020 that the contract from the HSE with the owners, for the period between March and the end of that year, was worth €21 million. RTÉ Investigates had discovered that the HSE in the initial hysteria had decided to lease 1,700 beds on the campus but that there were only 63 residents in the centre at the time of their report.
It is an ill pandemic, and all of that. It is also an ill ‘humanitarian crisis’ that blows no favours as many of the great and good of the Irish entrepreneurial elite and anonymous overseas firms have discovered.
In some instances hotel owners and others involved in the hospitality sector have opted for the lower maintenance asylum accommodation option as a much more lucrative and State/taxpayer guaranteed source of profits. There is literally no risk involved in the normal way that hotels or guesthouses or pubs might face.
Those who opt to be part of the multibillion State welfare scheme (whose beneficiaries are the wealthy owners and the 80%+ bogus applicants for International Protection) are making “money for jam” as used to be used to describe “money earned for little effort.”
Spare a thought for those who have not decided to abandon providing beds, full Irish breakfasts, and creamy pints for paying guests.
In overall terms, a report on accommodation capacity in the tourist sector compiled by Jim Power for the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation made the following stark comment on the impact which accommodation provision for mostly opportunistic asylum seeking has had on the ability to meet the demand from actual paying tourists:
“The reality is that public contracts to accommodate internationally displaced persons are taking considerable stock out of the accommodation market. This has been estimated by Fáilte Ireland as 1 in 5 tourism bedrooms no longer available to the tourism economy.”
According to its June report, Fáilte Ireland recorded that there were 4,750 fewer bedspaces available compared to the second quarter of 2024. All of that impacts on the number of visitors and where a hotel or other guest accommodation is given over to asylum seekers that has a multiplier impact on other local businesses.
Those businesses often find it difficult to maintain their standards and viability where there are hotels with huge capacity such as those on the Citywest campus in proximity which have been given over entirely to state contracts.
But not to worry, if you find it too difficult or expensive to find a hotel here if you were planning to holiday in Ireland or to take a weekend break or even stay over to see the All Ireland final, you always have the option of booking a trip overseas with Sunway Travel.