While there continues to be much fretting over the scarcity and expense of accommodation for students, one company which has pivoted away from student accommodation to providing for applicants for asylum has done very well from the changeover.
That company is Brava Capital and the latest list of payments from the Department of Justice indicate that it received another €2.8 million for the last three months of 2025. Which brings its total take from the caper to close to €30 million.
The company manages some 540 beds for asylum seekers in Sligo at the Clarion Student Village divided between two blocks at Benbulben Court and Milligan Court. As the name suggests the accommodation was specifically built to provide for students.
The fact that it has not been provided for students has greatly annoyed local people who have again expressed their anger at the fact that Brava continues to rake in the cash for a purpose for which the apartments were never intended nor referred to in the planning applications which were made by Brava dating back to 2022.
Some who took to social media in the last week or two have not been slow to recall that when concerns were initially raised about the intended use in 2023 that they were assured that there was going to be no contract awarded for asylum accommodation.
Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan had informed local media in August 2023 that he had been told by then Minister Roderick O’Gorman that there were no such plans and that he was confident that the accommodation would be available to students attending Atlantic Technological University for the coming term. No such availability came to pass.
Feighan topped the poll in the Sligo Leitrim constituency in the November 2024 general election. He was likely helped by the fact that he had told Ocean FM during the campaign that the use of the student accommodation was “embarrassing.” Not least I imagine to himself who presumably took in good faith what he had been told by the Minister.
Government protocols issued in August 2023 required that designated student accommodation had to remain vacant for a year before it could be changed over to asylum accommodation. Which meant that O’Gorman could honestly claim that there was no contract in place with Brava who had bought Benbulben Court and Milligan Court which had been built specifically as designated student accommodation.
On the other hand, one has to wonder how O’Gorman was apparently able to assure Deputy Frank Feighan, as reported in August 2023, that the accommodation was going to be available to students who had places in the Atlantic Technological University for the term beginning in September 2023.
What Brava did was simply leave the place empty for a year – as it was required to by the Government protocols on student accommodation – although the Department of Integration payment lists show that they received €362,320 during the period when there were no residents of any description living in the apartments.
For example, a payment of €59,640 for ‘IP Accommodation and/or Related’ was made to Brava Capital on March 3, 2024. Those payments and the fact that the accommodation remained empty during the college term strongly suggest that while there may have been no contract with Minister O’Gorman’s Department that both Brava and the Department appeared to be confident that asylum seekers and not students would be moving in at some stage in 2024. As indeed happened.
Even the old absentee landlords back in the days of ‘Aul Dacency would not have turned up their noses at Paddy and Mary bunging them regular payments when they were still off in their town houses far away from the peasantry and their coach surfing scholarly offspring.
Not an inapt analogy given that Brava Capital and its owners have little or no connection to Ireland other than they had the money to buy what was supposed to be badly-needed student accommodation and decide that they would rather join others in the far more lucrative IPAS sector.
Brava Capital is registered in the Isle of Man which means that its ownership details are obscured by the Beneficial Ownership legislation. The directors listed are Crown Directors with an address in the British Virgin Islands, along with five others with Isle of Man addresses.
These are David Johnson, Colin Williamson, Graham Moore, Michelle Caulfield and a company called Directorem Limited. Brava is also registered as an overseas entity with Companies House in London where the beneficial owner is registered as the Clevedon Foundation which is itself registered in the Isle of Man. The only name on its Isle of Man returns is Colin Malcolm Wilkinson.
All of which means that no one is any the wiser as to who owns the former student accommodation in Sligo, and who has been collecting approaching €30 million of your money for the past three years.