The company behind Buswells Hotel in Dublin 2 recorded an after-tax loss of €697,000 in the 18 months to the end of December 2025, a trading period when it was under new ownership.
Accounts for Sunflora Limited, which operates the hotel, show it booked the loss following the payment of more than €1.2 million of interest connected to loans held by the company.
At an operating level, Buswells was profitable. The hotel recorded more than €500,000 in operating profits in its first trading period under its new owners.
UK-based fund Roundstone Real Estate Group, cofounded by an Irish property veteran David Meagher, acquired the Dublin city centre hotel in late 2024.
RM Block
The first set of accounts for Sunflora showed it booked turnover of €5.4 million in the 18-month period.
The document said the firm, which began to trade in December 2024, recorded €4.2 million of administrative expenses and more than €222,000 in costs associated with the acquisition and restructuring of the hotel in its first year of business.
Operating profit for the period was more than €518,000 and the company employed 66 people.
A note in the directors’ report said the revenue in the 2025 calendar year was 11 per cent higher than the previous 12-month period and “12 per cent up on budgeted Ebitda”.
Meagher and William McManus, the directors, said net profit was “lower than expected driven by exceptional restructuring costs in the year”.
“The directors have deployed new initiatives and ways of working in the year which are expected to drive further outperformance in 2026,” the report said.
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At the time of the acquisition in November 2024 by Roundstone, The Irish Times reported the hotel opposite Leinster House was acquired for about €15 million.
Roundstone’s deal to acquire the property, once owned by businessman Seán Quinn and his family, was partly financed by Novellus, an alternative lender controlled by William McManus, a relative of racehorse owner JP McManus.
William McManus was appointed a director of the new firm behind Buswells at the time of the acquisition by Roundstone.
Further details in the accounts for Sunflora Limited show it owed €10.75 million to Novellus at the end of 2025. The finance carried a fixed interest rate of 10.5 per cent and is due in November 2027.
The firm also owed more than €4.1 million interest-free to Mingfill SA, a British Virgin Islands-based lender to Novellus. A further €462,250 was owed to London-based Roundstone West Limited on an interest-free basis by December 2029.
Buswells was brought to market in 2022 by liquidators for the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), which assumed control of the hotel and other assets belonging to businessman Quinn, with a guide price of €22 million attached.
Media reports linked a number of well-known families and businessmen to a deal for the property, including the Murtagh family behind insulation giant Kingspan and Eamon Waters, who sold Panda and Greenstar waste firms.
Meagher, who set up Roundstone with fellow property veteran Richard Banks, secured a deal to acquire the property from the IBRC liquidators in late 2024. He previously worked with AIB and most recently served as chief executive of UK retirement living developer Auriens Group.
Roundstone Real Estate Group has a portfolio of three properties in London and Dublin, including London’s Admiralty Arch, a five-star hotel due to be opened soon in collaboration with Hilton.
Last year, Roundstone Real Estate Group disclosed in planning filings it has also finalised a deal to buy a 100-bedroom hotel proposed by Keith Craddock’s Red Rock Developments on Pleasants Street in Dublin 8.
