The Government has bought the Citywest Hotel in Dublin for more than €148 million and will turn it into a permanent international protection accommodation centre.
Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan confirmed the purchase to colleagues at Cabinet on Wednesday.
The Government is now running a “community engagement plan,” following local concerns about its plan to take over the biggest hotel in Ireland.
It is understood that the hotel’s leisure centre, which has 3,000 members, will remain open to the local community under new Government ownership.
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Local people in Saggart organised a number of protests over the summer, most recently outside Leinster House.
According locals, more than 8,000 signatures were gathered this summer from a door-to-door petition in Saggart, Rathcoole and Citywest against the sale of the hotel.
The concerns include the effect the loss of Ireland’s largest hotel will have on the community.
Saggart has doubled in size since 2011 and the population went up by 46 per cent in the census between 2016 and 2022. The village has one pub, two restaurants, a small Dunnes Stores and a Centra.
The 764-bed hotel and conference centre has been leased by the State since 2020. It was initially used as a Covid-19 testing and vaccination centre before, in 2022, being converted to an accommodation and processing facility for asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees.
Mr O’Callaghan secured Government approval to go ahead with the purchase of the facility earlier this summer, as part of a plan to provide 14,000 State-owned beds for asylum seekers by 2028 rather than relying on private providers.
Mr O’Callaghan said the €148.2 million purchase price represented value for money for the State.
“Over a period of four years, we believe we’ll be in the position where we will have got our money back in terms of the investment,” he said.
Over 25 years, the State will save about €1.25 billion, he added. “It will be far cheaper in the long-term.”
Earlier this year it emerged the State’s bill for international protection accommodation topped €1 billion for the first time in 2024.
The total spend of €1.005 billion last year was up 54 per cent on the €651.75 million cost in 2023.
The daily spend includes all accommodation and ancillary costs such as facilities management and other related expenditure.
The company which previously owned the Citywest Hotel facility received more than €18 million from the State in the first three months of the year to provide accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees from Ukraine.
Cape Wrath Hotel Unlimited, owned by Tetrarch Capital, a key provider in the State’s international protection accommodation system, also received more than €70 million last year.
