Brendan O’Regan: Irish Innovator, Visionary and Peacemaker
by Brian O’Connell with Cian O’Carroll (Irish Academic Press, €34.99)
Joe Carroll
In the awful depression of the 1950s and early 1960s, Brendan O’Regan was a household name for his pioneering, job-creating work at Shannon Airport.
What was happening at Shannon with its industrial zone, new town, duty-free shop, tourism attractions like Bunratty Castle mediaeval banquets, seemed to be all the work of one man, a man who could inspire the rest of Ireland to get up off its knees and come up with new ideas.
Today the name Brendan O’Regan is known to only older generations except in his native Clare. This handsomely produced book will help to preserve the man and his amazing exploits.
The authors, who worked with him at Shannon, have done a superb job in re-creating those glory days and the extraordinary, modest man who made it all happen. He had luck on his side as well as zeal to succeed.
Medals
His father, James, was a prosperous farmer and hotelier in pre-war Clare where he owned the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis. After Blackrock College where he won hurling medals, young Brendan was sent abroad to top hotels in Germany and Britain to train in management.
As World War II drew to an end, he got the contract to run the restaurant at Foynes seaplane base, and made a reputation for first class service to the sophisticated passengers then using the transatlantic route. When Rineanna airport across the Shannon Estuary succeeded Foynes, O’Regan was first choice to take over as catering manager.
Always full of ideas (he inspired the first ‘Irish Coffee’) he introduced duty-free shopping for transit passengers whose transatlantic flights had to stop at Shannon for re-fuelling. As the airport grew he got the idea of a ‘free zone’ for new industries, an idea which was to be widely admired and imitated with observers coming from as far as China.
Out of this brainchild sprang the famous Shannon Free Airport Development Company (SFADCO). Thanks to the enthusiasm of Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, O’Regan got State funding which kept the investment afloat until some big international companies like General Electric and De Beers diamonds came on board.
Ever ambitious, O’Regan founded the first hotel management school and began building Ireland’s first “New Town” at Shannon to house the growing workforce.
While running SFADCO, he expanded his catering activities (hit by the overflying of the airport by the bigger jets) to expand tourism in Clare by persuading millionaires to buy Dromoland Castle for a luxury hotel and build more modern ones near the airport while devising attractions like mediaeval banquets at Bunratty, Knappogue and Dunguaire.
As if this were not enough, he began promoting cultural activities like the Siamsa folk theatre and Irish-language community enterprises. Then he used his organisations to promote Third World development.
Support
The authors, who once worked with O’Regan, admitted that he had begun to over-stretch himself and without the support of Lemass, who had passed on, the IDA and government departments were complaining that things were getting rather out of hand at Shannon. There is a good account of this in-fighting.
It was time for O’Regan to let go, but this only opened up a new vista as he threw himself into promoting cross-border relations and peace studies to help end violence in Northern Ireland.
This was a very fruitful period and Co-operation North (now Co-operation Ireland) brought thousands of people together from various political backgrounds and faiths. For much of this activity, O’Regan preferred to be a discreet influence, but he helped lay the ground for reconciliation leading to the Good Friday Agreement.
His life story is an inspiring one and well deserves to be told. This book will be a quiet eye-opener to a younger generation showing what one man’s vision and determination can achieve.