The directors of Dublin Aerospace have blamed a 'clerical error' for the company's over-claim of Government Covid-19 Employment Wage Subsidy Supports (EWSS) during the pandemic which has resulted in a €1.7m correction in its accounts.
In new accounts filed, the directors for Dublin Aerospace Ltd said the company was a beneficiary of the EWSS payments during the 2020, 2021 and 2022 financial years.
They said that after the 2022 financial year end, it was determined that "the value of EWSS supports claimed exceeded the value which the company had been eligible to claim due to a clerical error".
They added that the company "has fully repaid the excess claimed and there are no further matters arising from the company’s participation in the EWSS".
They said that as a consequence, certain values in the prior period’s comparatives in the 2022 financial statements have been re-stated.
The 2021 accounts did initially show that the company claimed €6.65m in EWSS and following the €1.74m correction, the restated figure is €4.9m.
As a result, the company’s corporation tax charge for 2021 has reduced by €218,290 to €422,846.
The new 2022 accounts show that the company recorded pre-tax profits of €2.2m for the 12 months to the end of September 2022 which were down 53% on the 2021 pre-tax profits of €4.86m.
The firm recorded the drop in pre-tax profits as revenues increased by 21% or €7.56m to €44.37m.
The directors said that when compared to the pre-Covid-19 revenues of the 2019 financial year, turnover had declined by €6.58m.
The directors claimed that the 2022 performance "was delivered against the backdrop of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which impacted trading for some of the 2022 financial year".
The directors said that the company received €1.84m in EWSS in 2022 and the funding "was used by the company to secure employment and underpin salaries during the pandemic".
"Throughout the pandemic, the company retained all its staff without lay-offs, pay cuts or redundancies. The company protected its skill base as well as its aggregate expertise and experience while also securing its capacity to respond quickly when its customers eventually resumed operations," they said.
The directors added that the supports "gave the company the confidence to recruit 45 more aircraft engineering apprentices over the course of the pandemic thereby ensuring the organisation has sufficient expert staff resources to address its future needs and supports its future plans".
Numbers employed in 2022 decreased by 11 to 381 as staff costs increased from €15.82m to €16.4m. Key management personnel totalled €2.4m.
The profits take account of €1.29m in non-cash depreciation costs and lease costs of €1.59m along with a gain of €400,215 in foreign exchange and a gain of €249,619 through the sale of fixed assets.
At the end of 2022, the firm’s shareholder funds totalled €33.5m that included accumulated profits of €26.89m.
The company’s cash funds increased from €2.67m to €3.47m.
In the prior year, Dublin Aerospace completed the development of the new Landing Gear Facility in Ashbourne, Co. Meath.
The directors said that with this new 70,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility, the company has installed the very latest technology in respect of cleaning, electro-plating, NDT and metal machining activities.
They claimed that the company now has capacity for 350 Landing Gear Legs per annum, representing a doubling of the previous capacity.
- reporting Gordon Deegan
