Big Developers: Colm Keena, Public Affairs Correspondent, traces how Menolly continues to expand.

Séamus Ross (55) has been involved in building residential property for the past 30 years, building more than 20,000 new homes during that period, according to his Menolly Group website.

Filings in the Companies Registration Office (CRO) indicate his building career jumped up a gear 11 years ago, when he and his wife Moira became sole owners of Menolly Properties Ltd, a company with which he had been associated since the 1980s.

Ross began scaling up, buying land, employing more workers, borrowing more money, and building more houses. Menolly took out six separate mortgages with Anglo Irish Bank during 1997. The accounts for the end of June 1997 show total bank borrowings of £27.9 million and stock of £28.7 million, more than double the stock figure of the previous year.

The company's accounts over the years don't tell the full story about how much money Ross was making, but they do show how the business grew and the profits increased. Menolly and its subsidiary companies had a turnover of £66.7 million in the 2000 financial year.

Two years later, that figure had jumped to €157.38 million. Pre-tax profits were £6.3 million in 2000, and €27.56 million in 2002. The profits of

construction companies can go up and down, depending on when projects come on stream, but the overall trajectory of the Menolly figures is ever upwards.

In 2001, the group put £4.99 million into a family trust, and the trust loaned the money back to the group as an interest-free loan, according to the accounts for that year. The pre-tax profit figure for the year (£3.3 million) was calculated after that transaction. Nor did the figure include payments to the two directors, which totalled £904,000 in 2001.

Furthermore, the accounts show that during the year a director, presumably Séamus Ross, sold land to the group. The value of the sale or sales is not given, but at the year's end the group still owed £606,000 arising from these sales.

The previous year the group had owed £7.9 million to the director at year's end, arising from land sales. However, much of the money the business was making seems to have been left in the family group during these years. There is little sign of dividend payments.

The last available accounts, for the year to the end of June 2002, show the group having accumulated profits of €53.7 million at that date, a year during which the group sold houses and residential property worth €156.8 million. The husband and wife directors paid themselves salary and pension payments totalling €947,000. By contrast, the 132 staff employed during that year received a total of €6.9 million.

Ross again sold land of an unstated value to the group, and at the end of the year was owed €525,000.

In 2002 the group had bank loans of €41 million, down from €78 million a year earlier. The group's main bank is Anglo Irish Bank. The accounts show that €6.3 million paid towards an employee benefit trust was reinvested in the group.

In 2003 the shares in Menolly Properties were transferred to a new holding company, CPS (Ireland). The companies abandoned their limited liability status and as such they no longer have any legal requirement to file accounts for public viewing.

The scale of the Menolly building operation continues to expand.

Apart from Menolly Properties, the CRO filings show the Rosses are the directors of a large number of companies, including property

development companies, management companies, investment companies and, more latterly, some hotel and leisure companies, many or most of them ultimately owned by CPS (Ireland). They are also the directors of investment companies in the Channel Islands.

The global value of these companies is not publicly available. A request for a briefing from Ross, or someone on his behalf, concerning his financial affairs was not met.