Dalata Hotel Group will buy the three star Maldron Hotel located at Barntown, Wexford for €3.53m in cash.

The 108 bedroom hotel has recently been refurbished - it features a bar, restaurant, leisure centre and four conference rooms.

The hotel has been operated by the group under the terms of a 33 year leasehold agreement. The current annual rent is €0.3m per year. This is subject to upward only rent reviews at five year intervals - the next review is due in 2019.

The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of April.

Dalata has been extremely active in the Irish hotel market - in 2014 it saw its revenues increase by 30.4 percent to €79m, it was its first year as a public company and it returned a pre-tax profit of €4.2m.

The group recently acquired the Holiday Inn Hotel in Belfast. It has also revealed plans to rebrand the Moran Bewleys Hotels under the new Clayton Hotels brand.