February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Harry Keaney
While in Washington, D.C., for the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern performed the official opening of the Doyle Washington Hotel, the Doyle Hotel Group’s third and largest American property.
The group’s two other hotels, both in Washington, are the Courtyard by Marriott Northwest and the Doyle Normandy.
The new luxury hotel, the group’s new American flagship, represents an investment of some $45 million by the privately owned Irish company.
The new property was developed on the site of the DuPont Plaza Hotel at DuPont Circle.
It contains 314 rooms, five standard suites and a presidential suite. There is 24-hour valet parking, full-menu room service seven days a week and a fitness and leisure center.
Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter
The Doyle Washington Hotel has been designed to accommodate the business traveler as well as the tourist. A business center is available with state-of-the art facilities. The hotel boasts more than 9,000 square feet of function space as well as video-conferencing facilities and ISDN lines for the fastest telecommunications connections.
A notable feature of the new hotel is Biddy Mulligan’s, an Irish bar manufactured entirely in Ireland and shipped to Washington.
The Doyle group, Ireland’s largest privately owned hotel group, was founded in 1960 by the late P.V. Doyle.
In addition to its three hotels in Washington, the group now has seven hotels in Dublin — the Berkeley Court, the Westbury, the Burlington, the Montrose, the Skylon, the Tara and the Green Isle — and one in London, the Clifton Ford.
All Doyle Hotel Group properties are located in capital cities and all have a 4-5 star quality ratings.
Cork development
In Cork, McCarthy Developments is seeking planning permission for a scheme of new homes worth almost £70 million. The plan for Ballinure, in Cork City, is for 573 houses as part of a £300 million Mahon Point development. If approved, the retail, office, leisure and residential scheme will provide a new commercial hub for Cork on a 111-acre site.
Fordham conference
Fordham University Law School’s seventh annual conference on intellectual property law will take place on April 8-9. Registration takes place at 8:30 a.m. and the conference runs to about 6 p.m. each day. Details, call T. Scott Lilly at (212) 636-6777.
IBO news
The Irish Business Organization of New York will hold a New Jersey business networking breakfast on Tuesday, April 6, at 8 a.m. in the Grasshopper 2 Restaurant in Carlstadt. The IBO’s regular monthly meeting will take place Wednesday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in the Shelburne Hotel in Manhattan.
Housing debate
As any returned immigrant will tell you, the cost of housing is certainly a hot topic in Ireland. Now, Fine Gael is to make housing its number one campaign issue in forthcoming local elections.
"Housing is the single most important issue this time around," Brian Hayes, Fine Gael’s spokesperson on housing, said. "We are hearing it everywhere, from those who can’t afford to buy, from parents worried about their children’s prospects and from those who can’t get housed by the local authority."
However, Fianna Fail TD Eoin Ryan has urged voters not to be swayed by the claims of smaller parties without first examining their own records on housing matters.
"It is ridiculous that smaller parties in particular are calling on central government to do something about the housing crisis, but at local authority level their councilors are voting against every new housing development," he said.
Irish bank merger
The chairman and former chief executive of the Bank of Montreal, Matthew Barrett, has been asked to chair the Irish board that will oversee the merger of the ACC Bank and TSB Bank, and the simultaneous flotation of the merged company.
The ACC Bank, originally the Agricultural Credit Corporation, was known as the farmers’ bank while TSB Bank was the trustee savings bank.
Barrett grew up in Kells, Co. Meath, but has spent most of his adult life in Canada.
The Irish government approved the merger of the two banks last month. The merger will result in a new bank with total assets of £4 billion and a possible market capitalization of about £500 million.
The merger and flotation is not expected to be completed until the middle of next year.