Dan McInerney
Born: November 2nd, 1924
Died: September 30th, 2018
Dan McInerney, who has died aged 93, was an exemplar of a particular kind of Irishman who both metaphorically and, in his case, almost literally, helped build the modern Ireland.
Starting from modest beginnings in the 1930s among the wet, unproductive fields of east Co Clare, his father, Thomas, a small farmer, had built up a side business as a builder of extensions and sheds, becoming sufficiently prosperous to be able to send the youngest of his eight children, Daniel, to school at the Cistercian College, Roscrea, something denied to Dan’s older sibling and later business partner, Ambrose “Amby” McInerney, who had to leave school in Scariff at 14 to work.
The boost given to the relatively small Clare building firm by the Shannon contract helped to lay the foundations for what became the largest of Ireland's construction companies
Blessed with great mathematical ability, Dan McInerney later took a Bachelor of Engineering degree at UCD in 1946, thereafter joining the by-then rapidly expanding family business, which had started building schools and local authority housing in counties Clare and Galway. A significant breakthrough came in 1949 when the newly incorporated company of Thomas McInerney and Co Ltd obtained the contract to build a new transatlantic-feasible runway at Shannon airport.
Although it hardly seemed like it at the time, the boost given to the relatively small Clare building firm by the Shannon contract helped to lay the foundations for what became, by the time it went public on the Dublin and London stock exchanges in 1971, the largest of Ireland’s construction companies.
This early part of his career was marked in McInerney’s case by very notable achievements in sport. Dan McInerney had emerged from Scariff’s hurling club as a leading player and became, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, one of the best and most consistent hurlers on his native county’s team, first as goalkeeper and then as an outstanding full-back, captaining the team in 1954, and playing on the team which lost to Limerick in the 1955 Munster final. Earlier, he had been one of the youngest players on Clare’s National Hurling League-winning team in 1946, and was on the Scariff team which won the county championship in 1946, 1952 and 1953.
Hurling was an abiding passion for McInerney, and remained so all his life. Joe Ó'Muircheartaigh of The Clare People recalled last week, in that newspaper, that McInerney had become so animated during a discussion of Clare's prospects of winning the Liam McCarthy Cup in 1995 that during an interview he had thrown away crutches he was using at the time following an accident, stood up and "burst into what was a monologue and stream of consciousness about hurling", and his county's chances that year. The younger Claremen must have heard about this, because they obliged with the trophy some months later.
The strong connections to the GAA very probably did not hurt the McInerneys when they won another important contract during the 1950s, to build the Hogan Stand at Croke Park, but otherwise this was a challenging decade in Ireland and, in the late 1950s, Dan moved to Britain, then experiencing a post-war economic boom.
McInerney moved back to Dublin, where he built large housing estates in the capital, including in Foxrock
Establishing an English arm of the family firm in Watford, he rapidly grew the English operation with large contracts for local authority housing and other publicly financed projects such as schools, commuting back to Ireland where his family remained based.
In the late 1960s, with the Irish economy finally lifting, McInerney moved back to Dublin, where he built large housing estates in the capital, including in Foxrock, and on the land of an old country house which he had bought as a family home in Carrickmines. Difficult as it is to imagine now, these suburbs were still then virtually rural.
It was perhaps ironic that, at a time when its success as a major company was assured following the flotation in 1971, McInerney’s, now known as McInerney Properties, faced one of its greatest challenges following the steep economic downturn in 1973 after the Saudi Arabian-led oil embargo and massive price rise of that commodity, following the Arab-Israeli war of that year. Quite suddenly, the company had to make more than 1,000 staff redundant, and the family was forced to spend over £5 million of its own money saving the business.
However, the ever-resilient McInerney turned adversity to advantage, expanding this time into the Middle East itself, with McInerney Properties becoming one of the very first Irish companies to operate in Gulf markets, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar, completing a wide range of projects including roads, schools, housing and even palaces for Arab princes. It also invested in large projects in Spain and Portugal at this time, both then also emerging markets for Irish businesses, building resort spas and hotels under the Four Seasons label at Vallamoura and on the Costa del Sol.
When, once again, the company found itself in challenging times following the slump in the UK property market in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dan McInerney followed his older brother, Amby, into retirement in 1993. McInerney Holdings continued on as a listed property company before going into examinership in 2010 in the wake of the financial crash.
McInerney retained to the end his support of and love for hurling, to which he had added a love of golf at Foxrock Golf Club.
Dan McInerney’s mother was Bridget Lenihan, and he had seven siblings, James, Vincent, Frank, Amby, Eilis (Murray), Marie (Barry) and Tess (Torpey), each of whom predeceased him. He is survived by his widow Margaret (always known as Gemma) (nee O’Donnell), and his children, Mary, Daniel jnr, Mark and Gemma jnr, and by grandchildren.