Brian Lenihan was born in Dublin on May 21, 1959. His father, also Brian, served in a range of cabinet positions, including Tanaiste, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Justice. His grandfather PJ Lenihan was a Fianna Fail TD for Longford-Westmeath and his aunt Mary O’Rourke also served in cabinet. His brother Conor Lenihan was a Minister for State. Brian grew up in Athlone, where he attended the Marist primary school, and at the age of 12 moved to Dublin. He went to Belvedere College and studied law in Trinity College and Cambridge and was called to the Irish Bar in 1984.
In 1996 he became a Dail deputy when he won the Dublin West by election caused by the death of his father, Brian Lenihan snr. In 1997, he married Patricia Ryan.
Brian Lenihan topped the poll in Dublin West in the 2002 general election, but was overlooked by Bertie Ahern for promotion to the Cabinet and was appointed Minister of State for Children. There was press comment that his talents were being overlooked and that he was a man that Ahern was said “not to like”.
The long-awaited promotion to the Cabinet came following the 2007 election when he again topped the poll in Dublin West. This time he was appointed Minister for Justice. His career in the Department of Justice ended abruptly in May 2008 when Mr Ahern resigned amid critical reports on his personal finances from the Mahon Tribunal.
The new Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, unexpectedly promoted Mr Lenihan to succeed him in Finance after less than a year as a senior Minister.
Brian Lenihan called it a “fantastic honour” but soon realised he had been handed a poisoned chalice as tax revenues plummeted and the construction industry went into nose dive. He told a conference of the industry that he had “the misfortune to have become Minister a few weeks ago as the building boom was coming to a shuddering end”.
The €3 billion deficit Mr Lenihan was forecasting for 2008 had ballooned to €7 billion several months later, and there was serious concern about the situation of the Irish banks following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in New York.
After only four months in office, he and his predecessor at the Department of Finance, Brian Cowen, would be confronted with an ultimatum to guarantee the depositors and bond holders of the Irish banks or face a run on these banks that could collapse the Irish economy.
For the next two-and-a-half years, Mr Lenihan had the unpopular task of introducing budgets that imposed levies on pensions, cut incomes, reduced public expenditure and standards of living while bank debts spiralled to fearful heights. In the early stages he was admired for his no-nonsense stance, but his last months in the Department of Finance were a politician’s nightmare as he endured mounting criticism for key decisions while battling recently diagnosed pancreatic cancer.
The economist and journalist, David McWilliams described receiving a visit late at night on September 17 at his home from Mr Lenihan who arrived chewing garlic. Over cups of tea, Mr Lenihan for several hours asked McWilliams for advice about the worsening situation. He said Mr Lenihan indicated his civil servants were nervous about offering a full bank guarantee.
Following a crisis meeting in Government Buildings on the night of September 29, the Government decided to guarantee all deposits and “certain debt” of the six Irish banks and building societies. This was estimated as totalling €440 billion of liabilities. Mr Lenihan described the guarantee, which other countries soon copied, as “the cheapest bailout in the world”, words that would come back to haunt him.
Presenting his 2010 budget in December, described as “the harshest in decades”, Mr Lenihan confidently asserted that “the worst is over”. However, international disquiet at the size of Ireland’s bank debts and the effect of zero economic growth on the public finances drove the cost of borrowing ever higher. Mr Lenihan was obliged to deny in October 2010 that Ireland would soon need an IMF-EU bailout as the interest rate on Government bonds surged over 8 per cent.
Following a spate of further denials from various Ministers, Mr Lenihan returned from a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels on November 16th to announce that the IMF-EU team was arriving in Dublin.
It was some months later after Fianna Fáil had been driven out of Government in the March 2011 general election that Brian Lenihan revealed his inner feelings on the bailout saga. He was especially bitter about the role of the European Central Bank which he virtually accused of forcing Ireland to accept the bailout.
On the final terms of the bailout, Mr Lenihan said the interest rate charged was “above what was required” and the schedule to downsize the banking system “unimplementable”. Of his own role, he said: “I believed that I had fought the good fight and taken every measure possible to delay such an eventuality and now hell was at the gates.
“I’ve a very vivid memory of going to Brussels on the final Monday to sign the agreement and being on my own at the airport and looking at the snow gradually thawing and thinking to myself: this is terrible. No Irish minister has ever had to do this before.”
By the time of these revelations, his world had greatly changed. In January 2011, he was defeated by Michéal Martin in the contest for the leadership of Fianna Fáil and in the March election the party was ousted from Government.
He was an extremely likable and able politician and lawyer, once seen as a future leader of Fianna Fáil.  However he unsuccessfully contested the Fianna Fáil leadership after Brian Cowen’s resignation but was the only Fianna Fáil TD elected in Dublin in February’s General Election. A fluent French speaker, he also studied piano and was a lifelong lover of classical music.
He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December, 2009, and he died on June 10, 2011. He is survived by his wife Circuit Court judge Patricia Ryan and his children, Tom and Clare, his mother Ann, brothers, Conor, Niall and Paul, sister Anita and aunt Mary O’Rourke.

Hector Grey was born Alexander Scott in Scotland in 1904. When he moved to Ireland he became a “turf adviser”, selling racing information outside racetracks. It was in this period he became Hector Grey, borrowing the name of a famous Australian jockey of the same name. In the beginning he used the assumed name only at racecourses, but later on when he became a successful businessman, he decided the name was lucky for him.
His was Dublin’s original bargain store. He bought and sold inexpensive light hardware, ornaments and souvenirs goods, travelling to Hong Kong and Taiwan to purchase his stock. The actor Noel Purcell recalled meeting him in Honk Kong. “It very was funny to hear him doing business with a Chinese businessman from whom he was buying his novelties, bric-a-brac and ashtrays.” Hector Grey and Purcell became lifelong friends, often going racing together, including trips to the Grand National in Liverpool.
Ali Hewson, wife of Bono, is a grandaughter.

In his book Penny Apples, Dublin businessman Bill Cullen, who knew him well, recalls Hector Grey’s sales “spiel” on Sunday mornings at his pitch outside the Dublin Wollen Mill at the Ha’penny Bridge on the north bank of the Liffey:

“Yes indeed, me auld flowers, the finest soaps of the Orient … and there isn’t one bar of scented soap in this box, nor is there two bars, nor three, nor four nor five. You have, ladies and gentlemen, six different-bars of scented soap for the delicate skin. leave the carbolic and the Sunlight Soap for the gurriers and try the secrets of this Mandarin Soap for yourself. And the six bars are at half price this morning. Four shillings in Harrods of London but two bob here today. No, I won’t charge you fine people two shillings; let’s reduce it to one shilling and sixpence. No I won’t ask you for one shilling and sixpence on this beautiful May morning, nor will I ask you for one and thruppence.” Hector threw the box in the air and gave three almighty claps with his hands before catching the box again, as he roared, “I’m only charging you one little shilling piece for this beautiful box of soaps. Six bars for one shilling – that’s only twopence each. I’m giving it away and who’s first for the bargain? Thank you sir,” he said as he handed two boxes to one of his sidekicks and took the two bob, which started the ball rolling.”

Bill Cullen adds: “Hector had a flow about him. A way with words. A laugh, a joke, a smile, all with perfect timing. A different spiel for every product. And Dublin came to watch and wonder and to buy.”
Hector Grey died in 1995.

John Patrick McManus was born on March 10, 1951, in Limerick. His love of horses was acquired from his late father, Johnny, who kept show jumpers. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School on Sexton Street.
“I used to study the horses in the papers and I would always try and have a bet on in the big races. It was a problem, as I was too young to go into a betting office and I wasn’t too big for my age either,” he told the Limerick Leader years later.

JP McManus

McManus began his business career at his family’s earth-moving business, and then became a bookmaker at Limerick’s greyhound track, the Market’s Field. Success as an oncourse bookie enabled him to buy his own racehorses, which led to backing and laying horses on the advice of his associate Jimmy Hayes. He also became an accomplished backgammon player.
In 1982, he and his wife, Noreen, a former nurse, bought Martinstown Stud on over 400 acres in Co Limerick from the McCalmont family. He is now jump racing’s largest owner with over 400 horses in training. His first really big win was a horse called Mister Donovan at Cheltenham. His early exploits in the betting ring earned him the nickname “The Sundance Kid”. From 1999, he enjoyed a very public battle with infamous Scottish bookmaker “Fearless” Freddie Williams. On 16 March 2006, McManus won in excess of £1 million from Williams at the Cheltenham Festival.
The most famous of his horses is Istabraq, a three-time winner of the Champion Hurdle trained by Aidan O’Brien. Tony McCoy is retained as his stable jockey. Former champion jockey Jonjo O’Neill trains some of his horses at the Jackdaws Castle facility which McManus helped finance. His horses run in the green and gold colours of the South Liberties GAA club.
His horse Don’t Push It, ridden by McCoy and trained by O’Neill, won the 2010 Aintree Grand National. While he is well known to racing fans, he remains somewhat an enigma. He says he “rarely bets” these days and when he does he usually describes them as “little bets.” He says betting is “not an obsession.” He is featured in “High Rollers of the Turf”, by Raymond Smith.
He has profitable investments in propery and a significant part of his wealth comes from foreign exchange trading which he oversees from his office in Geneva, also his official residence. He also has a permanent suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel. He returns to Ireland regularly.
Currencies have been a speciality and his bets on currencies are bank-scale, always working on the advice of his friends Dermot Desmond and Joe Lewis. He now has a wide portfolio of investments from leisure centres and betting shops to pubs and nursing homes. He is a large shareholder in Ladbrokes.
He part owns the luxury Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados which he acquired in 1997 with Dermot Desmond amd John Magnier for around €60m, with a reported further €280m spent on renovations. (Tiger Woods got married at the Sandy Lane).
He bought a 28.9% stake in Manchester United with John Magnier. In 2005 both men sold their shares in the club to US businessman Malcolm Glazer for €330m, making a reported profit of €130m.
He also profited to the tune of €33m from the €208m sale of the Standard Chartered Bank in London in 2006.
Other investments included his interests in the Next Generation leisure clubs, which he owned with Magnier and Desmond. The clubs were auctioned off for €300m in 2006 to London & Regional (L&R), a UK property firm. This sale netted McManus over €18m for his 14.4% stake, once company debts were accounted for.
In 2010 it was revealed He and John Magnieer had secretly built stakes in Mitchells & Butlers, a listed pub company which owns the All Bar One and Harvester chains.
In 2004, McManus set up Sporting Limerick, which sponsors Limerick GAA teams.
A dedicated philanthropist, McManus has been responsible for raising at least €50m for charity.
In 2006, he built a €120 million residence on his 400 acre Martinstown Stud farm in Co. Limerick.
A keen golfer, he organised the Invitation Pro-Am golf tournament in Adare, Co Limerick, in 2005 and 2010, to raise funds for Limerick charities. Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington and Tony McCoy (caddie: Ruby Walsh) were among the personalities taking part. The event has raised €95 million to date
JP McManus’s personal fortune is estimated at €1.2 billion (£900 million) but at its peak was probably closer to €2 billion. Like many others McManus is reputed to have been affected by the economic downturn.
In 1996, he established the JP McManus Scholarship Award which provides €6,750 each year for third level education to eight selected students at his former secondary school C.B.S. Sexton Street in Limerick. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick and has funded the new Kemmy Business School at the University. Jim Kemmy, a dogged socialist, was a close friend of McManus’s.

Although he lives abroad most of the time, he maintains very strong links with Limerick. “It is a delight that our children feel as strongly about our home place as we do and I look forward to spending many years of happiness in Limerick,” he said on being named Limerick Person of the Year in 2011.

Irked by criticism that he was a tax exile, he said in late 2011: “I didn’t leave the country in order to avoid paying a tax … I paid my taxes and I set up my business abroad.” He added: “Do they want you to come back and try and support the local economy, try to earn some money abroad and then put it in the local economy. That’s what I like to do.”

McManus was diagnosed with cancer in late 2008 and received treatment in the USA. He is said to be coping well. He is married to Noreen and they have three children.

Billy Flynn was an Irish private investigator who came to national prominence during the Morris Tribunal inquiry into corruption in the Garda force in Donegal.
He took up the case in 1997, when Frank McBrearty from Raphoe claimed that he was being set up as a murder suspect and subjected to garda harassment. He bombarded the then Minister for Justice, Nora Owen, with over 100 files of documents outlining the McBreartys’ case.
When critics dismissed him and gardai privately said he was out to destabilise the force, Mr Flynn proved them all wrong. He produced evidence that threatening phone calls to members of the McBrearty family were made from the home of a garda. He was later praised for his work by the Morris Tribunal, the inquiry set up five years after Billy Flynn had started his investigations.
One unexpected visitor to his Enfield, Co Meath, home was the then Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, driving by in 2005 on his way to his holiday home. Mr McDowell had studied the letters that Mr Flynn had sent to Ms Owen. A few days later, Mr McDowell produced one of the letters on RTE’s ‘Questions And Answers’ to suggest that she had prior knowledge of garda corruption in Donegal.
Billy Flynn’s work had been limited to professional negligence cases when, in 1984, took on the case of Frank Kelly from Birmingham, who had invested life savings of £7,000 in a Dublin-based, Gibraltar registered company called International Investments. The money disappeared, and the investigation into the financier Finbarr Ross – a rogue investor who had left more than a thousand pensioners high and dry -  which followed, led to Mr Flynn publishing ‘Gibgate – The Untold Story’ in 1992.
In the foreword, Mr Flynn wrote: “If I had known what I was taking on, I would have stuck to negligence cases. In the eight years since that phone call, my fight for justice for the victim …. has taken me all over the world. It has driven me to drink and a heart attack, caused me to neglect my family and bankrupted me twice.” He estimated it cost him £500,000.
Married with five daughters and three sons, he wrote that he was in the motor trade before starting his private investigator business. He described himself as a lifelong supporter of Fianna Fail at the time of writing, and stubborn by nature with a natural distrust of the establishment.
Billy Flynn ran several missing-person investigations and probed a number of unsolved murders. In later years, he worked as an insolvency practitioner.
Demand for his services soared in the worsening economic climate. He hoped for a final Big One to go out on and thought he had found it in sub-prime lenders. He knew many people who had borrowed excessively during the boom and were now left with mortgages they couldn’t repay for properties worth half the price.
Prior to his sudden death at his home in Enfield, Co Meath, on October 31, 2010, at the age of 64, he had been working on a campaign to legally challenge mortgage lenders trying to repossess homes. He believed that the information he had gathered in his investigations could be of help in future test cases against lenders.
Predeceased by his parents Patrick and Elizabeth, he is survived by his wife, Eileen; family, Patrick, Sharon, Eileen, Jackie, Peter, Elizabeth, Claire and Andrew, brother Patrick and 22 grandchildren.

Mike Murphy was born in Rathgar Road, Dublin on October 20, 1941, the eldest of five children. Educated at Synge Street CBS and Colaiste Mhuire. His parents’ marriage was frought with conflict and he left school at the age of 17 without sitting the Leaving Cert exam.
He worked in a Dublin drapery shop, then with Castrol Oil. In his later teens he became involved in acting with the Dublin Shakespeare Society, and also wrote scripts for sponsored programmes on Radio Eireann. He later joined the Brendan Smith Academy of Acting. He also went on to play a small part in The Girl with Green Eyes, the film of  Edna O’Brien’s novel. This led to further acting parts in a number of films on the newly-established Telefis Eireann.

Mike Murphy began his broadcasting career as an announcer with Radio Eireann. By 1968 he had established his reputation as an announcer and a radio presenter. He then joined the TV service presenting one series of a pop show called The Go-Two Show, and filling in as an announcer on the game show, Jackpot. In 1969 he joined the RTE’s newsroom as a sports announcer.

His big break in television came in 1971 when he was asked to present the National Song Contest, one of the highest rated programmes at the time. He regularly hosted the Castlebar Song Contest. This led to him getting his own variety show, The Likes of Mike. The show did well, running, for a few series.

He went on to present a travel programme called Murphy’s America, and later the spin-off show, Murphy’s Australia. Following the success of the former programme he was asked to present Morning Call on radio.

With the arrival of the new television channel, RTE 2, he presented his own Friday night show, The Live Mike was a success and ran for three series, launching the comedic career of the young Dermot Morgan. One of the most famous incidents from the show occurred when he caught out an irate Gay Byrne as the latter attempted to record a piece to camera in the grounds of Trinity College.

“I think that one of the reasons that what we did was so successful was that it brought a little ray of light into people’s lives, ” he told the Sunday Tribune in 2007. “I swear to God, I think it did. Christ, it was a dismal time in Ireland back in the ’80s. People were leaving the country, they couldn’t find jobs; they were hard, harsh days. So people badly needed an escape of sorts. One thing that we Irish were always good at was taking the mickey out of ourselves, so we tried our best to find humour in all that darkness.”

The younger Mike Murphy

Murphy attempted to break into British TV in 1981. He hosted a show from Pebble Mill in Birmingham that went out just after midnight on New Year’s Day 1982. This was a late night version of the popular ‘Pebble Mill at One’. However he made no further appearances on the BBC.

In 1988 he began presenting The Arts Show on RTÉ Radio 1, and also the Saturday night television game show, Winning Streak. In 2000 he retired for the first time from radio broadcasting and was the subject in the same year of a special tribute edition of The Late Late Show.

His last TV show was Winning Streak, which he presented before he had a heart operation in 2001. One year earlier, he gave his last radio broadcast as the presenter of the Arts Show. During his RTÉ career he won four Jacob’s Awards.

Mike Murphy reinvented himself as a successful businessman. He already had experiencedf success with a production company, Emdee. He became an executive director or Harcourt Developments, the property company founded by Pat Doherty. The company has interests throughout Ireland, Britain, the Caribbean and the USA. He has beeen responsible for marketing and the job allows him to continue his interest in the arts.

Asked in 2006 if he hankered after his life in broadcasting, he said he would never say never, but his business life was “too interesting these days”.

In 2008, he was  the subject of a two part documentary, The Real Mike Murphy. It delved into Mike’s childhood which was filled with many bleak times. His parents’ unhappy marriage, according to the RTE publicity, “created a strained and ominously silent atmosphere, punctuated by bitter rows, in which Mike frequently intervened. The result was a terrible relationship with his father, filled with resentment and, in later years, regret.”

He returned to Irish television screens in 2011 with a series, The Big Interview with Mike Murphy, after resigning as an executive director with Harcourt Developments, which suffered in the 2008 property collapse.
“I was hoping that by the end of my tenure I’d get a very generous farewell as I wafted off into the distance, but because of what happened, there were no spare funds for me to get a ‘thank you very much’ farewell and in the meantime my pension had taken a hit as well,” he said in an RTE interview. He continued to work on Harcourt projects, including the Titanic Quarters in Belfast.

Mike Murphy and his first wife Eileen separated in 1995 and the family home in Foxrock was sold in 1997. They had four children, Mark,  Elaine, Carol and Dee. He married Anne Walsh, who was his producer on the Arts Show, and they live part of the year in a beach apartment in Florida.

Broadcaster

Chuck Feeney. "Giving while living."

Chuck (Charles) Feeney was born on April 23, 1931, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His Irish roots go back to Co. Fermanagh and he holds dual citizenship in Ireland and the USA. He served as a U.S. Air Force radio operator during the Korean War, and began his career selling duty-free liquor to US Naval personnel at Mediterranean ports in the 1950s. He financed his way through Cornell University’s hotel management school as the “sandwich man,” selling 700 baloney-and-cheeses a week out of a wicker basket.
He made his fortune as a co-founder with Robert Warren Miller of the Duty Free Shoppers Group in 1960. DFS eventually expanded to off-airport duty free stores and large downtown Galleria stores, and became the world’s largest travel retailer. In 1996, Miller’s and Feeney’s interests were acquired by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the French luxury goods group, for $1.63 billion.
Earlier in 1992, Feeney had secretly transferred the vast majority of his near 40% stake in “Duty Free Shoppers” (DFS) to his charitable foundation – Atlantic Philanthropies, which has donated several hundred million dollars to finance university research, libraries and on-campus accommodation on both sides of the Irish border. The main academic beneficiaries were Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the University of Limerick and his his alma mater Cornell University. His total donation to the island of Ireland comes to about 1$ billion.
All the while, in keeping with his long held desire for anonymity and his sense of modesty, Chuck Feeney refused honorary degrees and asked that his name be kept off buildings funded through his charitable foundation.
His belief in the “giving while living” philosophy, adopted from Andrew Carnegie, has influenced Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to “give while living.” In early 2011, he joined Giving Pledge, the charity launched by Gates and Buffet, whereby he undertook to give, while he was still alive, to the charity the remaining of his wealth not committed to the Atlantic Philantrophies.
He once said: “I had one idea that never changed in my mind — that you should use your wealth to help people. I try to live a normal life, the way I grew up.” He added: “I set out to work hard, not to get rich.”
He became involved in the Irish peace process after watching news of the Enniskillen bomb on television in 1987. “I just thought, this isn’t us. I hadn’t been involved, but I thought, this is something we should get involved in, and I got involved.”
A 2003 article in Irish America magazine noted that Feeney’s personal donations to Sinn Féin amounted to over a quarter of a million dollars, making him the organisation’s largest American donor at the time. The donations were personal ones, made outside of his foundations.

He has ben described in Bloomberg Businessweek as “the man who compiled what would today be worth $4 billion, buys his suits off the rack, uses a plastic bag for a briefcase, sports drugstore spectacles, wears a $15 plastic watch, and flies coach. He owns no house and no car. He wonders aloud about the need for more than one pair of shoes. When he’s in New York, he likes to dine on chicken pot pies at grubby midtown dives.”

Until his 76th birthday he always flew economy class, but his foundation in 2007 passed a resolution instructing him to travel business class, for health reasons.

He has four daughters and one son. Two of the daughters are Diane V. Feeney and Leslie D. Feeney Baily. He married twice. In 2007, his life story was told in The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing, by Conor O’Clery.

Has said:

“Giving while living has got to be better than giving while dead.”

“nobody can wear two pairs of shoes at one time.”

Tony Ryan founded Ryanair in 1986 with just a single 15-seat passenger aircraft and saw it grow within 20 years into Europe’s largest low-cost airline. Born Thomas Anthony Ryan in Thurles, Co Tipperary, on February 2, 1936, he was educated at the local Christian Brothers school. His father, Martin, a train driver, died when he was 18, ending his hopes of going to university. Instead, he joined Aer Lingus as a dispatch clerk, and then management trainee, to support his mother and the younger children.

Tony Ryan. "People say I'm arrogant and sure I am, but you should see those arrogant sons of bitches on Wall Street."

He always liked to say that the inspiration to go into business on his own account came to him on an evening in 1974, when he watched the painstaking care with which a South-East Asian street food vendor went about the preparation and selling of his products. “I felt it a pity that such marketing, technical talent and energy was devoted to a process which produced a mere penny. Then and there, I determined that when I went into business on my own account, I would apply my energies to developing and marketing a big-ticket product which could sell for vastly more.”
By the early 1970s, he had become leasing manager for Aer Lingus, responsible for finding profitable uses for aircraft surplus to requirements in the cyclical downturn following the first oil-price shock. In 1974, he set up Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) to lease aircraft. He put in just £5,000 of his own money, arranging support from Aer Lingus and the merchant bank, Guinness Peat.
It turned into a huge success as air travel revived and the leasing model allowed second-tier airlines to grow without requiring massive capital. Starting with a second-hand Boeing 737, by 1991 GPA had a turnover of more than $2 billion. Air Canada took a third share and Tony Ryan assembled high profile directors – including former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
But it remained Ryan’s business. He held an 8% stake and directed strategy. In 1990, GPA announced orders for 700 aircraft over the next decade. But in 1992 came the spectacular collapse. A much-hyped international flotation was planned, but the banks, spooked by a recessionary downturn and the effects of the first Gulf war, failed to come up with the money. In 1993, most of the business was sold to General Electric of the US at a fraction of its earlier multiples. Ryan stepped down, but eventually banked about €55m from the sale of the rump, renamed AerFi.
He said of this bruising experience: “People say I’m arrogant and sure I am, but you should see those arrogant sons of bitches on Wall Street.”

Meanwhile, with two partners, Liam Lonergan and Christy Ryan, he launched Ryanair in 1985. Starting with a 15-seater aircraft flying from Waterford to Gatwick, the small airline was making only steady progress. Again, Tony Ryan showed himself a shrewd judge of people. He promoted the abrasive and uncompromising Michael O’Leary to chief operating officer in 1993 and then chief executive, in return for a share in the airline. O’Leary set to work creating a no-frills airline, shocking even the Ryan family with his decision to do away with food service, and rapidly expanded across Europe with a network of previously under-used airfields.

Commercially, it went from strength to strength, employing almost 5,000 people and operating more than 550 routes. After it was floated on the stock exchange in 1997, the Ryan family made more than a £100m through the sale of some of their shares.
Tony Ryan stepped down from active involvement as chairman in 1998, though he later extended his aviation interests with 16% of Tiger Airways, a Singapore low-cost operator, formed in 2003.
Although technically resident in Monaco, he pursued interests such as horse-breeding and farming in Dolla, Co Tipperary. A particular interest was the introduction of new strains of cattle into Ireland, including his own prize winning Blonde d’Aquitaine herd.

He owned homes in Tipperary, Dublin, London. He also owned stud farms in Kentucky, the farm on Ibiza and an apartment in the luxury La Rocamar building in Monaco, where he became a tax exile. In 2001, he bought the Bordeaux vineyard Chateau Lascombes.

He bought the Lyons Demesne near Celbridge in Co Kildare, from Michael Smurfit. After the break up of his marriage to Mairead, he had a six-year relationship with Miranda Guinness who had been married to Lord Iveagh. Her expertise in interior design guided him through the restoration of the 18th century manor

His final relationship was with Martine Head, daughter of well-known French horse trainer Alec Head.

He encouraged marine studies and aquaculture, donating the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute in Galway, as well as funding the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship at Dublin City University. He received an honorary doctorate (economic science) from the University of Limerick in 1992.
He had three sons from his marriage to Mairead: Cathal, who died shortly after his father, Declan and Shane..
Thomas Anthony (Tony) Ryan  died after a long illness on October 3, 2007, aged 71.

Showbusiness impresario Fred O’Donovan was born in Dublin on May 27, 1927, the son of John and Kathleen O’Donovan. He attended St Joseph’s CBS, Fairview, and later studied electronics at Kevin Street technical college.
In 1944 he joined the RAF with his friend Cathal O’Shannon. While stationed at Long Kesh, the American singer Paul Robeson visited to entertain army personnel and Fred O’Donovan got his first taste of showbiz when he helped to stage the performance.
He later served with an intelligence unit, searching for both missing allied soldiers and Nazis in hiding. The unit located more than 11,000 of those they were looking for; many were dead, and most of the survivors were ill or shell-shocked.
There followed a year in a Swiss sanatorium, where he received treatment for tuberculosis. The illness ended his hopes of becoming a professional footballer, and the RAF paid for him to be trained by the BBC as a radio producer.
Having worked with a touring repertory company in Britain, he returned to Ireland in the early 1950s for a holiday but decided to stay and became an assistant stage manager at the Gaiety Theatre, working with Cyril Cusack and Tyrone Guthrie.
He produced sponsored programmes for Radio Eireann, and later produced numerous Christmas pantomimes as well as the long-running variety shows Gaels of Laughter , starring Maureen Potter, and Jurys’ Irish Cabaret.
Other productions included Juno and the Paycock and Man and Superman with actor Peter O’Toole at the Gaiety, a television special, The Bing Crosby Show, and a film profile of Brendan Behan, Meet the Quare Fella. His variety show Ireland on Parade toured the US. In the course of his career he had dealings with writers including Seán O’Casey and George Bernard Shaw.
He turned his attention to producing radio shows and became managing director of Eamonn Andrews Studios in 1957, beginning a working relationship that lasted 24 years. The company’s interests included the Portmarnock Country Club, the Gaiety Theatre, Television Club, a share in the Dolphin Hotel and a recording studio. The association with Andrews ended abruptly, with a substantial financial settlement in O’Donovan’s favour.
He was chairman of the board of the National Concert Hall from 1981 to 1986.
In 1981, he was appointed chairman of the RTÉ Authority. He was close to Fianna Fail Taoiseach Charlie Haughey (they went to the same school) and at the time of the 1983 abortion referendum was opposed to a special RTE Late Late Show dealing with the issue. He was already known to be opposed to abortion and was accused of abusing his position.
In 1988 he was appointed a member of the Independent Radio and Television Commission, established to award Ireland’s first commercial broadcasting licences. When, in 1989, Radio 2000 was licensed to broadcast in Dublin, it emerged that Fred O’Donovan was a former director of E-Sat TV, a major shareholder in Radio 2000. The award of the licence was unsuccessfully challenged in the courts.
Fred O’Donovan served as a governor of Dublin’s Harcourt Street Children’s Hospital and, with Dr Austin Darragh, was a founder of the Conquer Cancer Campaign.
His role in saving the Gaiety from extinction by having the building listed was acknowledged at a ceremony in November 2009,  followed a few months later by a one-off production of Gaels of Laughter in his honour.
Fred O’Donavan died on May 14, 2010. He was survived by his wife Sally Tennent, whom he married in 1956, their daughters Fiona, Sally Ann and Penny and son Freddie, and his brother Bill, former head of RTÉ 2fm.

Kruger Kavanagh. From Kerry to Hollywood and back.

Muiris ‘Kruger’ Kavanagh was born in Dun Chaoin, Co Kerry, in 1894. He showed off his spirited individuality at primary school and got his nickname for his support for Paulus Kruger and the Boers in the Boer war.

He emigrated to America when he was 19 and after getting a basic education he worked at various jobs from bodyguard and nurse to PR man for a New York City theatre. He bacame familiar with many top actors and producers.

But at the age of 26 he left it all behind to return to Dun Chaoin. He opened a guesthouse and pub which was to become one of the most famous in Ireland. Set on the remote Atlantic coast of the south west of Ireland, it became the haunt of many celebrities, attracted by Kruger’s own relaxed and colourful personality. Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles were regulars there while filming Ryan´s Daughter. Writer Brendan Behan was also a friend. Kruger’s pub is still in business and a popular traditional music venue.
Kruger Kavanagh died in 1971.

Pat Quinn. Made it, lost it, made it again.

Pat Quinn was born in the village of Cloone, Co Leitrim, on July 1, 1935, the eldest of six children. He was educated at the local national school and St Mel’s College, Longford, before working as as a management trainee at Woolworth’s in Limerick at five pounds a week salary. His mother Annie ran the family pub and shop, McNamee’s, while his father Barney was a garda. He retired from the police after 20 years and bought a Bedford truck and started to deliver groceries and rations throughout Leitrim.
After a five-year career with Woolworths which saw him working in branches in Ballina, Galway and back to Limerick as assistant manager, Pat opened the first Quinnsworth in Longford town, in partnership with his uncle.
He married Anne Blake from Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, in 1961. They went to Canada and he spent five years learning the grocery trade while also doing some promoting. Among the acts he brought to Canada were Johnny Cash and the Rolling Stones.
He came back to Dublin in 1965 and worked at first as a manager in H Williams. He opened Quinnsworth in the Stillorgan Shopping Centre in December, 1966, complete with escalator, a novelty in Ireland at the time. By 1971 he had six stores and a turnover of £6 million.
The stores depended heavily on Mr Quinn’s colourful personality – he had a strong belief in advertising and he fronted the Quinsworth TV ads himself in his poloneck, becoming a household name in the process. His main competitors were Dunnes Stores, Superquinn, H Williams and Five Star. He created the phrase “yellow pack” for his cut-price brand. In the early 1970s, Pat Quinn sold out his controlling interest in Quinnsworth and the stores eventually became the first branches of Tesco in Ireland.
He bought the Mooneys pub chain in Dublin, and lost it. He established and lost the KilternanSports Hotel in Co Dublin. He opened a chain of snooker halls and made money. At the age of 50, he went back into retailing with a new cut-price supermarket, ‘Shoparound’, but without success. He worked as a bookie before leaving recession-hit Ireland and returned to Canada. Before he left, a group of friends got together and held a £100-a-head dinner in Dublin to send him on his way.
Back in Canada his Midas touch returned. He worked with Murphy’s Snack foods for a while and then became Toronto’s Irish concert promoter. Over the years he showcased  The Dubliners, Paddy Reilly, Brendan Grace, The Fureys, Phil Coulter, Dave Allen, Daniel O’Donnell and Val Doonican.
He opened bookshops and later the Irish Embassy bar and grill and PJ O’Briens pub in Toronto. His son Paul operated The Irish Embassy Bar & Grill in Montreal. He also set up a successful bookmaking business, Booksworth Canada..
Pat Quinn died at his home in Toronto on November 24, 2009. He was survived by his wife Anne, and seven children: Bernard, Pat Jr, Lisa, Gavin, Paul, Tanya and Barry.