Owner of the Oliver St John Gogarty pub sees profits soar 82% in Dublin's Temple Bar

Pre-tax profits at the group that operates the Oliver St John Gogarty pub in Dublin’s Temple Bar last year soared by 82% to €3.1m.

The Martin Keane-controlled Drayton House Holdings Ltd operates the well-known Dublin pub named after the Dublin literary figure immortalised in James Joyce’s Ulysses, where he appeared as Buck Mulligan.

Every year, tens of thousands of tourists descend on the Oliver St John Gogarty pub and new figures for Drayton show that the pub helped drive up group revenues by 6%, from €12.23m to €12.92m, in the 12 months to the end of last February.

The group also operates Blooms Hotel in the Temple Bar area.

The accounts show that the group’s pre-tax profits increased by €1.36m to €3.1m.

Numbers employed by the group last year increased from 104 to 107, with staff costs, including directors’ pay, reducing from €3.67m to €2.73m.

The figures show that the number of administrative staff totalled 69 and bar staff totalled 35.

Drayton House’s operating profits last year increased by 76% to €3.12m.

The firm’s cost of sales totalled €2.6m while the company’s administrative expenses amounted to €7.15m.

The firm’s cash during the year increased from €2.27m to €3.95m.

The directors’ aggregate remuneration last year dropped marginally from €228,906 to €217,500 and a pension contribution of €900,000 to directors in 2014 was not repeated last year.

At the end of February last, the firm had €25.8m in accumulated profits with shareholder funds standing at €31m. That included a revaluation reserve of €5.1m.