The man whose business success was built on the wings of political failure
Sunday September 17 2006
In the audience before him, heads turned to seek out the object of this praise. It took a while, but he was there, standing at the back of the crowd, bespectacled, in a brown suit. Only his modest smile suggested that this unprepossessing figure was indeed the object of the Taoiseach's comments.
For a multimillionaire property magnate who wields enormous influence on the Dublin landscape, this former county councillor from Clare remains decidedly low-key.
A great man for truisms, according to one associate, he's the sort who would chose a few pints in the pub over a five-course meal any day. His down-home philosophy is sometimes spun from platitudes displayed on barroom walls and gentle words of wisdom proffered by salt-of-the-earth employees.
But for all that, Bernard McNamara is an aggressive player and acquisitions have propelled his fortune to €150m, putting him just behind Cork-based newspaper family the Crosbies and construction rivals Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett on Irish rich lists.
He has just unveiled plans, with his partner, JerryO'Reilly, to tear down the Tara Towers Hotel on the Merrion Road and replace it with a landmark building twice the height of Liberty Hall, powered by wind turbines on the roof. Next door, he's finishing off the €200m Elm Park development, consisting of swanky apartments and state-of-the-art offices.
Then there are the hotels. He's part of the consortium revamping the Shelbourne Hotel, where he once networked with architects as a young builder on the make in Dublin. He has plans to transform his latest project, Parknasilla in Co Kerry, the Taoiseach's favourite holiday venue, into a world-class hotel.
Not forgetting supermarkets, either. He is part of a consortium that recently bought Superquinn, the upmarket retail chain launched by Senator Fergal Quinn, and the consortium is ploughing €63m into this.
But, true to his roots, he is also building the county council offices in Ennis. They say all politics is local; the same could apply to McNamara's business style.
His home county of Clare features large in the account of his rise and rise which he gave to management guru Ivor Kenny for his book Leaders: Conversations with Chief Executives in 2001. In it, McNamara tells how he took the small building company founded by his father Michael to the national stage. Unlike other construction giants who started out as bricklayers, his background was relatively comfortable. In recession-hit Seventies Ireland, his father bought a house in Raglan Road for £34,000 to accommodate his children going to college.
The young Bernard left St Flannan's in Ennis with a few Honours and a clear ability to fend for himself and was encouraged by his father to study business in Dublin.
In 1971, he joined his father's business, persuaded back down from Dublin to help out on three large contracts which had just been landed. Then his father's company got its biggest commission to date - building an extension to Galway hospital - and other health-board contracts followed.
Fuelled by a "fear of failure", Bernard McNamara started an aggressive drive to win contracts and in 1984 moved to Dublin.
In the early years, he was an arriviste in the capital, hob-nobbing in the Shelbourne Bar with the Dublin moneyed crowd, looking for any opening to expand his business.
"When I came to Dublin I found I knew an awful lot of people I had met at Renvyle House in Connemara, where I had gone on holidays for 12 years. In Renvyle, I had not known what they did, but years later I found they were in businesses related to my own," he told Ivor Kenny. "I met more architects socially, whose office doors I could not get past, in the Shelbourne Bar with Moira [his wife] on a Friday evening than any marketing guy going out knocking on doors."
It still took two years to win his first project - the RTE Social Club. Loughlinstown Hospital and the O'Reilly Institute at Trinity College followed. That was just the start. The company went on to win huge contracts for hospitals, public buildings and offices across the country.
From his Kenny interview, it's clear that McNamara's life lessons were learned in Clare. From a foreman he learned that "everyone is good at something - the trick is to find out what they are good at". He cites a sign in Joe McHugh's pub in Liscannor, Co Clare, as summing up what he learned in life. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."
Among his few failures was his electoral defeat in 1981. Flan Garvey, a Fianna Fail councillor in Clare, remembers McNamara as a smart and energetic twenty-something working for his father. He was ripe for the picking and the local branch of the party talked him into putting himself forward as a councillor in 1974. He served two terms, but high office evaded him. He stood in the 1981 general election and when he didn't make it, walked away from politics.
"At the time of the general election I'd say he decided - look, the national scene is out for me now," said Garvey. "In my book, he was ministerial calibre. He was a very level-headed man who never got flustered, had a good positive attitude and was interested in the economy, particularly the building industry."
Bernard himself has told friends that this particular failure was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Last year, his company turned over €360m, according to the most recent accounts. He has a portfolio that encompasses student accommodation, nursing homes, landmark office blocks, apartments and, most recently, hotels. He's built the National Gallery's Millennium Wing and is responsible for the major development of St Vincent's Hospital. He now wants to build a €500m children's hospital in Dublin.
With his partner, Jerry O'Reilly, he is pursuing an interest in hotels and now owns the Galway Radisson, the Kilkenny Ormonde and the Parknasilla in Co Kerry, as well as the Tara Towers in Dublin 4.Politics has done him no harm either, bringing him to the notice of ministers who appointed him to State boards like the Great Southern Hotel from 1991 to 1995, and more recently to the NationalGallery in 2004 and the National Roads Authority from 1997 to 2004.
Many associates describe Bernard McNamara as an innovative entrepreneur with a social conscience, who is loyal to his country and keeps his investments local, unlike others such as Treasury Holdings, which has made killings in the UK.
He has been a patron of several national charities, including the Special Olympics. In his native Clare, he is well known for his generosity. He brought the Lismorahaun singers and their conductor, Archie Simpson, to perform at the National Concert Hall, after hearing them sing in Clare. He sponsors the South of Ireland Golf Championship and has placed his helicopter as the disposal of legends in the local GAA such as octogenarian Hindy Nealon for all the big matches, when the county makes it through to the finals.
For all of his down-home attitude, McNamara is enjoying the spoils. He bought two properties on Ailesbury Road to develop his new home in what was the former Japanese embassy. He owns a summer house near Lahinch golf course in Clare. Every year, he hosts a penthouse party in the Radisson Hotel during the Galway Races, and Clare is always well represented.
Conservationists have been watching him. "He's not the worst. He's not the slap-'em-up type of builder," said one conservationist, who credits his sister, Shelley McNamara, with sparking his keen interest in the architectural innovation that marks out his projects. Shelley McNamara is an architect who recently became the first member of her profession to be invited to join Aosdana.
But he flew into hot water recently for overzealous use of his helicopter. He was accused of building a helipad without planning permission - an allegation he denied - on land he owns beside Booterstown marsh, a bird sanctuary. Conservation groups feared that the noise of the machine would frighten the birds. McNamara gave in with another of his famous truisms. "There's no point in trying to prove you're right if there's a chorus of people saying you're wrong," he told newspapers at the time.
Locals say he hasn't used the helicopter pad for a while. In fact, he seems to have won over the Friends of Booterstown group by allowing members to use his land for a children's treasure hunt during the recent opening of a new viewing platform for the roosting birds on the marsh.
"There is a detente," said a gracious Veronica Heywood, chairwoman of the Booterstown Nature Reserve Management Advisory Committee. "It was really very kindof him."
Ms Heywood hopes that Mr McNamara might be persuaded to allow some of his adjoining marshland to be used for wildlife conservation. Based on the stories of McNamara's ties to his home county, if she can root out a Clare connection among the Friends of Booterstown, it's a done deal.
- Maeve Sheehan
