Architectural firm of Home of the Year judge records €176,408 profit for 2024
The architectural firm co-owned by Hugh Wallace, a judge on RTÉ ratings winner Home of the Year, has recorded post tax profits of €176,408 last year.
New accounts show that the post-tax profits of €176,408 for the 12 months to the end of June last followed post-tax profits of €166,678 in the prior year. Douglas Wallace Consultants Ltd paid out dividends of €57,412 last year and this followed a dividend payout of €30,000 in 2023.
In an interview, Mr Wallace said: 'Business was very good last year. Very stable.' He said that the hotel and leisure business is back after it was decimated during the covid pandemic with the main work in the sector now refurbishments.
Mr Wallace said that the company is now involved in house building in Dublin, Cork, Sligo and Dungarvan and 'we were not in the residential space four or five years ago'.
The company is also the designer of Harcourt Development's €200m redevelopment of the North Quays in Waterford city that recently secured planning permission from Waterford City and Council. The plans include 350 apartments across six blocks and a nine-storey, 160-room hotel.
Mr Wallace said that 'roadblocks' in house building are the implementation of building regulations and fire regulations. He said that the company employs 24 with the majority architects and architect technicians.
Accumulated profits at Douglas Wallace Consultants Ltd at the end of June last totalled €702,147 while cash funds declined from €315,982 to €217,498.
Housing crisis
Asked to comment on measures to combat the housing crisis, Mr Wallace stated that the hiring of 'Super Marios' for the Government's Housing Activation Office is not the answer in addressing the crisis.
Mr Wallace said that rather than having a Housing Activation Office, the Land Development Agency (LDA) when it was established should have been granted the powers to address the housing crisis 'and make it more robust and give it proper authority'.
Mr Wallace dismissed the Government's Housing Activation Office as 'just another quango'. He said that the largest bottlenecks today in the effort to build more housing are securing finance from lenders and the cost of construction.
He said: 'They are interlinked. Planning is a bottleneck as well but not to the same extent as these two issues. The banks are not lending.' Mr Wallace said that he advises clients that the planning for projects may take up to two years and 'they can't understand why this should be the case'.
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