Heraty and Roche back €4.5m Volvo Irish yacht
Seventeen Irish businessmen and women stumped up €100,000 each to get the Green Dragon, the Irish boat set to battle the Indian Ocean this Saturday in Volvo's round-the-world ocean race, into the water.
It cost €4.5m to build the Green Dragon, which is currently running in third place in the race, and almost half of this was raised by the business group -- a syndicate called Shamrock Challenger.
Among those in the syndicate are Gerard O'Hare, the property developer who lured former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern onto the board of his Parker Green International.
Other syndicate members include the extraordinarily wealthy NTR chairman Tom Roche, CPL boss Anne Heraty and her husband Paul Carroll.
Bank of Ireland governor and well-known sailing enthusiast Richard Burrows has also thrown €100,000 into the pot, as has Gerard Barrett, the managing director of Edward Holdings, which owns the glitzy G Hotel in Galway and D Hotel in Drogheda.
Developers Jed Pierse of Pierse Construction, Michael Cotter of Park Developments, John O'Sullivan, the owner of the Galway Bay and Hodson Bay hotels, and Dublin Port Company boss Enda Connellan also helped to finance the boat.
Three Galway sailors are also financial backers -- John Killeen, head of Oranmore's Cold Chon, which manufactures road surfacing materials; the multi-millionaire builder Eamon Conneely, who owns Oyster Homes; and Enda O'Coineen, executive chairman of Kilcullen Kapital Partners, a private equity company operating in the Czech Republic. The syndicate will share the profits -- if any -- made from the sale of the boat once the race is finished.
Green Dragon is currently being repaired following damage on the first leg of the race from Alicante to Cape Town, before it sets off for the next leg to India. If it survives the race, the Dragon will be among those boats stopping off in Galway this summer.
The last time Ireland competed in the Volvo round-the-world race was 19 years ago, with NCB Ireland, which came 12th out of 25.
- Louise McBride
