Firm providing accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees records €7.5m profit
Gordon Deegan
A Cork-based group which provides accommodation to asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees recorded post-tax profits of €7.53 million last year.
New consolidated accounts for Peppard Investments Holdings Ltd also show it recorded revenues of €28.1 million and operating profits of €9.95 million last year.
Next Week and Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Peppard Investments Holdings, operates the 108-bedroom Riverside Park hotel in Macroom, Co Cork, and also the 230-bed Abbeyfield Hotel in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, which is an emergency reception and orientation centre for refugees.
The principal activity of the company and group continues to be property development, emergency reception, orientation and accommodation centres.
Peppard Investments Holdings recorded a pre-tax profit of €8.7 million after paying out interest payments of €1.23 million.
The group achieved a post-tax profit of €7.53 million after incurring a corporation tax charge of €1.18 million.
The group has its registered office at Wilton in Cork and its joint owners are listed as John Crean and Tony O’Neill.
Next Week & Co has continued to earn substantial income from accommodating international protection applicants and refugees this year.
Purchase orders published by the Department of Integration show that Next Week & Co has received payments of €8.2 million for the first six months of this year.
Figures released last week by the Minister for Integration, Roderic O’Gorman, show the spend on accommodating international protection applicants to October 11th this year is €748 million.
The number of asylum seekers arriving in the Republic this year is projected to be 69 per cent ahead of 2023 figures.
In a written Dáil reply to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, Mr O’Gorman said the 2024 spend already outstrips the total outlay for 2023, when the State bill for accommodating international protection applicants came to €651.7 million.
If the State spend for accommodating asylum applicants remains at the same level for the remainder of the year, the total 2024 bill is projected to amount to be around €960 million.
In his reply, Mr O’Gorman said: “Over recent years, Ireland, alongside many other EU Member States and other countries, has experienced a very significant increase in people seeking International Protection (IP).
“At the moment, there are over 32,000 people accommodated in the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) system, of whom approximately 9,000 are children.
“At the end of August 2022, by comparison, our system was accommodating approximately 7,000 people.”
He added that “the increase in costs over recent years aligns to the increased numbers of people needing accommodation.”
Mr O’Gorman separately said that last year, around 13,000 IP applicants arrived in the State and “we estimate that by the end of this year, we will see 21,000 or 22,000 arrive”.
Mr Tóibín also sought the fees paid to the 10 largest suppliers of services, construction and property in each of the past five years concerning IPAS accommodation.
However, in reply, Mr O’Gorman said “contractual arrangements between the Department and external providers are considered commercially sensitive".
“In order to preserve the Department's negotiating position, the costs paid to providers are not published, as making this data available to other accommodation providers would not serve the public interest.”
Mr O’Gorman did confirm that Government departments do publish online reports detailing Purchase Orders (PO) relating to payments for goods, services or works procured to a value greater than €20,000.
