Donal Morrissey expects the €25 million Mount Wolseley Country Resort to be the biggest tourist centre in the Republic within five years, writes Barry O'Halloran.

Donal Morrissey happily concedes that Tullow, Co Carlow, is not the centre of the universe, but he is in the process of pumping €25 million into a development that will have the capacity to house 700 visitors in a hotel and holiday cottages just south of the town.

He is the man behind the Mount Wolseley Country Resort, which will be centred on a four-star 140-bedroom hotel and 66 four-bed holiday cottages on the grounds of an old estate outside Carlow. The project is located on the site of the Mount Wolseley Hotel and golf course, which Mr Morrissey developed 10 years ago.

The hotel is scheduled to open early in August and already has its first wedding booked for around that date. Mr Morrissey and the hotel's recently appointed general manager, Mr John Keating, are confident that the deadline will be met. All the cottages will be ready next year.

Construction employed a total of 200 people, and the resort will be staffed by 120-150 workers.

The overall business already has €1.5 million in advance bookings. A number of high-profile events, including the Ryder Cup at Mount Juliet, which is a 30-minute drive away, and World Ploughing Championships, which will take place in Tullow in 2006, have contributed to that.

In fact, Mr Morrissey says that he could have let the whole place out to a US agency for the duration of the Ryder Cup, but the price was not right, and he decided that the project should take its chances.

Through the Lismard group - made up of Lismard Properties, Mount Wolseley and a number of linked companies - Mr Morrissey's business interests are spread across property, the motor industry and, sand and gravel quarrying.

He's a local man who began working in quarrying with his father more than 40 years ago with Dan Morrissey Ltd, which is still trading.

His first venture into hotels was the original Mount Wolseley project. He has ambitious plans for this latest development and has assembled a powerful management team. Mr Keating worked with the Rocca Forte Group in the UK.

Another recruit to Mount Wolseley will be its new head chef, Irishman Mr David Chambers, who will join from London's Rools Restaurant, which was named restaurant of the year in the UK last year. The marketing manager, Ms Alva Pearson, came from the Berkeley Court, one of Jurys Doyle's prime properties in Dublin.

TFL International, which worked on the Four Seasons in Dublin, has begun working on fitting out the new rooms.

However, while the south-east will be the centre of at least some people's universes during the Ryder Cup and ploughing championships, these are essentially once-off events. Who is going to provide ongoing revenues?

Mr Morrissey has two target markets in his sights - families and the business conference market, to which he will be offering a facility with the capacity to hold 750 people.

Mount Wolseley will include comprehensive indoor and outdoor children's play areas with facilities for a range of sports, including five-a-side soccer and tennis, that will have dedicated staff, and it will also operate summer camps.

Mount Wolseley will also rely on local businesses aimed at attracting tourists. The hotel has put together a brochure detailing all of these and each one is included for free, with one caveat - if guests have complaints, the subject will be removed from the marketing material.

Other plans include a health spa, an oriental restaurant, and an on-site mini-market and off-licence. The restaurant will also offer food deliveries to the holiday cottages.

Mr Morrissey expects the hotel to break even in its first year and begin moving into profit after that. Its projected first-year sales are €7 million.

The hotel will not be overburdened with debt. In fact, borrowings will be just one of three funding streams that will pay for the development.

Mount Wolseley will sell most of the holiday cottages to investors, and Lismard Properties is putting its own money into the project. Mr Morrissey says that this is only possible because of the property development tax breaks that give allowances for capital expenditure and tax shelters on rental income from businesses such as hotels.

Mr Morrissey explains that Lismard Properties has already generated income in this fashion from the original Mount Wolseley project and some of its other investments. He is rolling that money on into the new development. As Lismard is the investor, it gets the capital allowances. There are no other investors involved.

He points out that the tax breaks allow investors to keep rents low. Without them, the income would be subject to full corporation tax, which would force rents up to the point where they would not be competitive.

Needless to add, he is a supporter of this style of incentive, which has been increasingly under pressure from within and without Government over the past few years.

"None of this would be here without the incentives," Mr Morrissey says. "A lot of good-quality hotels have been built in this country because of the tax breaks, and you'll see quite a few of them in Dublin."

He also argues that these developments have made staying in Ireland competitive.

In the short term, he also intends that the new hotel will go for a number of recognised international quality marks and he has begun preparing staff for this by sending them to European facilities that are qualified.

Mount Wolseley also has another market, based on its connection with Wolseley family, who had the original estate up to 1925. (It was originally given to a General Wolseley, who commanded part of the Duke of Wellington's army at Waterloo.)

In 1895, Mr Frederick York Wolseley's family built the first Wolseley car, which became a popular model in Britain in the early years of the last century.

Like all vintage vehicles, the marque has its enthusiasts, who celebrated the centenary of the manufacturing of the first model at Mount Wolseley nine years ago. They still have some contact with the current owner, who is also looking at ways of exploiting the opportunities in the property's link to motoring history.

Mr Morrissey first entered the property business in the mid 1980s and has a number of interests in the south-east. Lismard is developing a 30-acre business park in Portlaoise, Co Laois.

"We are currently building six warehouses and we have an office suite there," he says. "We're not after heavy industry, what we're interested in is service and distribution."

The company chose the town because of its location, with access to Dublin, the west and south. The Government has also singled it out as a strategic hub.

A number of Mr Morrissey's family are involved in the business. The Lismard group includes two motor dealers, Lismard Motors and Lismard Autoworld, in Carlow. They have four franchises: Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Hyundai and Peugeot.

Both garages are run by two of his four daughters. His son works at Mount Wolseley and will be joined by another daughter, who has experience in the hotel business. Another daughter has a solicitor's practice in Tullow.

Lismard also has two shopping centres in Carlow.

Mr Morrissey is confident that he can make the latest venture work. "Within five years, this will be the biggest resort in the country," he says.

Tullow may not be the centre of the universe but it could be about to take its place in the sun.