Mulryan firm lost €54m as drop in sales led to 50pc writedown
A housebuilding firm owned by developer Sean Mulryan's Ballymore suffered losses of €54m last year, according to accounts just filed with the Companies Office.
The accounts are for housebuilding firm Helsingor, and confirm that its €82.5m of bank loans are in NAMA.
It is part of the property empire of Sean Mulryan, one of the country's biggest developers.
The company is behind the Stapolin village development of hundreds of houses and apartments in Baldoyle in north county Dublin.
Despite that, Mr Mulryan has avoided the receiverships and enforcement action suffered by many "top" NAMA names.
Racecourse
Mr Mulryan acquired the former Baldoyle racecourse in 1999 from developer John Byrne.
Ballymore then bought an additional 350 adjoining acres to create a huge development site along the north Dublin coast.
Planning permission was granted to build more that 400 houses, with plans to develop almost 3,000 housing units on the site over time, through a number of phases.
Early phases of the scheme have been completed, with properties ranging from one-bedroom apartments to four-bedroom houses already built.
Sales dropped from €10m in 2010 to €3.6m last year however and Helsingor slashed the carrying value of the remaining works in progress by half from €91m to €45m, far less than the outstanding debts.
The writedown was the big driver of last year's loss of €54m, which compared to "just" €6.8m in 2010, the accounts show.
- Donal O'Donovan
Irish Independent
