Dublin Aerospace blames ‘clerical error’ for €1.7m over-claim of Covid support

In new accounts filed, the directors for Dublin Aerospace Ltd state the company was a beneficiary of the EWSS payments during the 2020, 2021 and 2022 financial years.

They state 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”.

The company said it “has fully repaid the excess claimed and there are no further matters arising from the company’s participation in the EWSS”.

Dublin Aerospace said that as a consequence, certain values in the prior period’s comparatives in the 2022 financial statements have been restated.

The 2021 accounts initially showed 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.

New 2022 accounts show the company recorded pre-tax profits of €2.2m for the 12 months to the end of September 2022 which were down 53pc on the 2021 pre-tax profits of €4.86m. The firm recorded the drop in pre-tax profits as revenues increased by 21pc, or €7.56m, to €44.37m.

The directors state that when compared with pre-Covid-19 revenues of the 2019 financial year, turnover had declined by €6.58m.

Its 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 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.”

The directors state 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. Pay to 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.