€34m received by owners of Citywest Hotel for facilities

THE owners of Citywest hotel are the second highest paid company in the country under State contracts to provide accommodation to asylum seekers and Ukranian refugees.

Tetrarch Capital received at least €34m last year to accommodate asylum seekers and Ukranian refugees, according to figures by the Department of Integration.

The payments were made to Tetrarch’s company, Cape Wrath Hotel UC, which owns the 764-bed Citywest hotel and connected convention centre.

Citywest Hotel has been closed to the public since March 2020, when lockdowns started and the HSE began to use it as a self-isolation facility and field hospital.

The convention centre has been used as a transit hub run where asylum seekers and Ukranians are processed before being moved to other accommodation in Dublin and across the country.

The company’s latest financial accounts state it had agreed to licence the entirety of its southwest Dublin hotel and convention centre to the department for a period of at least two years.

The transit hub has been at capacity since the start of the year with more than 650 asylum seekers at the facility.

Gardai have responded to incidents at the hotel involving fights between groups of men of different nationalities.

The entrance to Citywest Hotel

With delays in the amount of time people spend in the centre before moving to more long-term accommodation, tensions have risen, leading to fights breaking out on a number of occasions.

Approximately 7,000 meals are provided daily between the hotel and transit hub.

A Cape Wrath spokesperson told the Irish Times that the company would continue to “work very closely and positively” with the department “to ensure that the campus runs as efficiently as possible in what is an unprecedented situation”.

The highest amount paid by the State last year was €80m to the Tifco group, the Irish hotel business owned by US private equity group Apollo. The €80m figure includes monies paid to Travelodge Ireland and Pumpkinspice Ltd, whom Tifco also own.

UK-based JMK group received at least €17.2m to accommodate asylum seekers at its Holiday Inn Dublin Airport hotel.

The hotel group, run by Pakistani businessman John Kajani, closed their 421-bed hotel to the public at the start of last year, to lease the entire facility to the State.