THE Irish exchequer may have missed out on an estimated £7.4billion through the premature sale of London’s Battersea Power Station.
NAMA sold the iconic building — which has since become one of London’s most prized properties — for £400million in 2012 but a spokesman for the derelict power station told The Irish Post that the site could be worth an estimated £8billion once developed.
The multi-billion pound profit represents more than 10 per cent of Ireland’s first bailout drawdown of €67.5billion in 2010.
It would also pay for over 97 per cent of Ireland’s yearly education budget and would cover the Government’s Emigrant Support Programme (ESP) grant to Britain for the next 1,400 years at the rate of last year’s grant, which was £5.4million.
Edward Moore, an agent for the Brunswick Group who head up business communications for the power station, said: “It’s a hugely iconic building that has been lying derelict for 30 years but a number of things have happened to help its development.
“The people who have bought the site are willing to put money into it, there’s the wider development of the site in conjunction with the development of Nine Elms and then the expansion of the Northern Line on the London Underground network.”
The latest house prices index shows that the average price of a home in Britain increased by 8.8 per cent in 2013 with economists predicting a further surge of eight per cent this year.
And Irish property developer Paddy McKillen, who invested in London hotels The Connaught, Claridges and The Berkley, has described NAMA’s decision to sell the site as “probably one of the most devastating decisions for the Irish economy”.
“My view is that the site was sold for a steal and the new owners probably made a billion within a few months and will most likely make billions on the development. I feel the sale also caused catastrophic damage to Treasury Holdings, an Irish company,” he told a national newspaper in Ireland.
The south-west London site was purchased by a Malaysian Consortium — SP Setia, Sime Darby and the Employees’ Provident Fund.
Previously, the asset was held by Richard Barrett and John Ronan’s Treasury Holdings.
Brunswick Group anticipate that the first phase of development, which will combine residential and retail properties, will be completed in 2016/17 with a final completion date on the project of 2024.
WHAT £7.4 BILLION WOULD GET YOU IN IRELAND
- Pay for 10.5 million overnight stays in an Irish hospital: According to Ireland’s health service the cost of an overnight stay in a hospital is between €800 and €900
- Train 298,182 teachers in Ireland: Peter Mullan, Media Officer at The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, estimates the total cost of training a teacher over a four-year period in Ireland to be €30,000 (£24,817)
- Pay 29,136 new teachers in Ireland for 10 years: Mr Mullan said the average starting salary of a teacher in Ireland was €30,702 (£25,398)
- Pay for 97.25 per cent of Ireland’s education budget for one year (€8.7bn or £7.19bn)
- Provide more than 298,471 emergency beds for the homeless for a year: Focus, the homelessness charity in Ireland, said: “Providing emergency homeless accommodation can cost up to €30,000 (£24,793) a year for a bed”
- Train almost 100,000 (99,391) nurses in Ireland: The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) estimate that it costs €90,000 (£74,453) to train nurses over a full four-year course in Ireland
- Provide a home and support for 616,923 people to move on from homelessness: Focus estimates in can cost less than €14,500 (£11,995) to take one person out of the plight of homelessness
