Yesterday, an application appeared on the Dublin City Council planning site seeking to discover “Whether the use of the Atlas Language School Residence at 96-98 Rathmines Road Upper, Dublin 6, D06Y684 to accommodate persons seeking international protection is exempted development or not exempted development under Class 20F of the Planning & Development (Exempted Development) (No.4) Regulations 2022.”
Nice of them to ask but it would seem that the premises in question have been in use for the purpose of providing such accommodation since the second half of 2022. We know that from the list of payments which began in November 2022.
The Atlas Language School residence was also named by former Minister for Integration and all things inclusive and nice, Roderic O’Gorman, in a list of IPAS centres provided in a response to a Dáil PQ in January 2023.
On September 28, 2023, the premises were subject to an inspection by the International Protection Procurement Services. It had a capacity of 59 mixed residents who occupied the 34 rooms.
The report noted that “The centre is a four story building that accommodates students and International Protection Applicants, all floors have communal spaces.” That admixture of asylum seekers and language students from overseas would appear still to be in place.
The report found few issues other than that mould was identified in several rooms and toilets and that there had been complaints that several rooms had been without electric lights for periods; of three weeks in one instance.
According to the property records the building is owned, since October 2019, by the Representative Church Body of the Church of Ireland. The building containing the language school and IPAS centre is presumably leased to the Atlas Language School.
I contacted the RCB to ask if they still owned the building and if they were aware that an application had been made to DCC regarding an exemption even though the building had been used to accommodate applicants for International Protection since 2022. I had received no response prior to publication.
I also contacted Dublin City Council, the Department of Justice and the Atlas Language School with regard to the same, but had likewise received no response other than a request from the Department to provide the Eircode for the building. There was no further communication.
Atlas Language School is owned by the Atlas Language Institute which has an address in Portobello House, Dublin, which is the main location for the courses offered and was once the site of a large private college
Atlas is owned by co-founders Alan Brennan and Nico Dowling through ALNI Investments DAC. That company reported assets of €2.67 million in 2025 and, curiously, that it had no employees. The company also operates a language school in Ennis.
Atlas is fully accredited by ACELS which operates under Quality and Qualifications Ireland which comes under the responsibility of the Department of Further and Higher Education. Atlas is also licensed to offer courses as part of the Erasmus programme which offers courses to overseas students who come to Ireland.
In a profile of Dowling that is found on the Erasmus site he refers to their charitable work and that “We are also offering free language courses for refugees who have recently arrived in Ireland.” Happily, they do not have to go far to find their students for whose accommodation they are being paid handsomely. The charity is on us, bro.
The number of English Language students in the Irish state who have been granted study visas has grown exponentially over the past 20 years, roughly corresponding with the existence of Atlas which was founded by Dowling and Brennan in 2003.
It has been estimated that since 2000 several hundred thousand students have come here from outside the EU and the EEA for that purpose. In the three years between 2023 and 2025 there were a total of 178,295 Stamp 2 visas issued to non EU/EEA students of which around a half were for students enrolled in English Language courses.
It is accepted that probably the vast majority of such students are working either part time or even longer hours and that there is a grey area regarding the primary motivation for such students coming to Ireland in the first instance.
There is no suggestion of course that course providers such as Atlas or any of the other language schools facilitate this, but it has become a significant contributor to overall immigration numbers.
Atlas itself has been regularly issued with work permits to employ people from outside of the EU and EEA. In 2025 it was issued with four permits.
Meanwhile, we are no closer to resolving the mystery as to how Atlas have managed to operate an IPAS centre in the middle of Rathmines for four years without, it would appear, ever having applied for or been granted an exemption for that purpose.