Ely Property founder and chief executive Philip Marley has predicted that the firm will at least double the number of student accommodation units it runs to some 4,000 by the end of 2009.
Now part of support services group Newcourt, Ely is examining a number of possibilities in the British market and further afield in Europe.
"Under review in my office, there's potential for another 2,500," Mr Marley said. The company has 1,900 units under management at present and this will increase to nearly 2,000 this year.
Ely started out with 70 units in Dublin in 2001 and Newcourt acquired the company for €22 million last year.
Mr Marley said that the company had identified possible opportunities to facilitate the development of units in Madrid, Barcelona, Munich, Antwerp and Budapest.
"If you build it they will come and the bigger you build, the more they'll come because it's a lifestyle choice," he said.
The continued focus on student accommodation comes as the company pursues parallel plans to develop the first private daycare hospital in central Dublin at Aldborough House at Portland Row in the north inner city.
Ely has paid €4.5 million to buy the remaining 75 per cent interest in the company that owned the house, Aldborough Developments, that it did not already control.
The consideration is being funded through the issue of some 2.64 million new additional Newcourt shares, which trade on the IEX and AIM markets.
Ely wants to complete that project before embarking on another. "I want to put this one away and get it done," said Mr Marley.
He questioned the Government's policy of co-locating private hospital building on the sites of public hospitals because the private sector was already incentivised to build such hospitals through tax breaks.
"The concept of tax incentives is to fuel the imagination of the private sector. That's all that should be required," he said.
The combination of tax breaks with the use of State land free of charge through co-location "derisked" such developments to the point that he questioned whether there was an unhealthily low level of risk in such projects.
