Company paid €7m by Dublin City Council to house homeless in hotels
● Information released after eight-year battle as firms fought to stop release of documents
Dublin City Council (DCC) has released the first details of the amounts it has paid private operators of homeless accommodation following an eight-year battle.
The records, which cover 2010 to mid2016, show one low-profile company, R&G Administration Ltd, received €7m in payments in an 18-month period from 2015.
Details were released by DCC following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request — which had been made in June 2016. The council brought a High Court challenge to a 2018 decision by the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) that ordered the release of the records. It was only earlier this month that the council volunteered to release some of the records sought.
The long-running and unresolved request has been cited by the council and other public bodies to block the release of records relating to payments to accommodation providers for homeless people and international protection applicants under FOI.
Among the hotels that objected to the details of their payments being released was the Castleknock Hotel, which claimed its contract with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) would be in jeopardy
Its submission said: “Fairly or unfairly, our competitors are likely to use this information [about homeless accommodation] both publicly and privately to undermine our reputation to important clients when tendering for business.”
The released records show the Castleknock Hotel was paid €307,000 in the 18 months from the beginning of 2015 for homeless accommodation.
The biggest payment revealed in the documents is €7.07m paid to R&G Administration Ltd, the company whose services include rooms at the former Regency Hotel in north Dublin and in a building on the North Circular Road. DCC paid it €2.76m in 2015 and €4.3m by June 2016.
At the end of 2022, the firm had accumulated profits of €5.63m.
Directors Grace and Raymond O’Connor, together with Muriel O’Connor, received directors’ remuneration of €1.54m in 2022 from Posado Ltd, the holding company for R&G and related companies.
The hotel giant Dalata was paid €4.4m for the use of its rooms while Tifco, the company behind Travelodge and other hotel brands, was paid €4.28m.
Sunny House Hotels Ltd, which runs the Sunny Bank Hotel in Glasnevin, received €2.96m from 2010 to June 2016.
Competitors are likely to use this information to undermine our position to important clients
The Viking Partnership, behind the Viking Lodge on Francis Street, and one of its partners James Gough, received €1.36m.
Kitelm Ltd, the company that ran Rostrevor House, a former nursing home in Rathgar, received €564,000. Kitelm’s directors are Therese Lipsett and her daughter, PR consultant Avila Lipsett.
Avila Lipsett said last week that Rostrevor House was sold in 2019.
The Dublin Regional Homeless Authority (DRHE) which co-ordinates homeless services among the four Dublin councils has gone from spending just under €50m on accommodation in 2013 to a projected €301m in 2024. The Department of Housing says a record 13,866 people, including 4,174 children, accessed emergency accommodation in March.
The released records show that in 2015, as the need for emergency accommodation grew rapidly, the DRHE began paying for accommodation with credit cards. It spent €3.6m through credit cards in 2015 and spent the same amount again in the first six months of 2016.
While the recipients of €5.6m of the credit card spend have been redacted in the records, City Break Apartments received €708,000, €205,000 was spent in Maldron hotels and €268,000 was spent in Staycity serviced apartments.
The Sunday Independent has asked that the OIC rule that details of all payments in excess of €30,000 in a year be released by the council.
Only one private accommodation provider agreed the details of payments should be released in the public interest. Some 50 hotel and private accommodation providers made submissions to the OIC seeking for the records to be kept confidential.
One provider argued release of their hotel name would essentially mean the release of his guests’ addresses.
Some accommodation providers argued the information concerned had been provided in confidence and referred to “privacy of contract”.
Concerning its original decision, the OIC noted no contracts existed between the providers and DCC in 2016 or “at best a verbal contract was in place”.
It also noted no tenders had taken place for the provision of accommodation services.
A number of hotels complained their identification as providing homeless accommodation would affect their trade.
The OIC reported: “In essence, they contended that, ‘rightly or wrongly’, guest numbers would fall and major contracts, as well as functions and weddings would be lost or withdrawn if their companies were identified as providing accommodation for homeless people. Some companies referred to specific feedback from customers to support this view.”
The FAI has said it has “no issue” using a hotel that houses homeless people. Among the good causes it supports is the Homeless World Cup and Irish Street Leagues.