Everyday Business with Aidan Donnelly

Niall McConnell and Nik Healy, co-founders of Convergent. They have spent the entirety of their business life working with companies to dissolve information chaos in business which is a significant barrier to business growth. For businesses to perform optimally, information must be unbound and flowing seamlessly across various systems, departments, and users. Founded in 2014, Convergent is a docum...

DMG Media is part of one of the largest media companies in the world and continue to grow their position in Ireland. It is home to some of the best-known media brands in Ireland and the expanding portfolio of websites, newspapers and magazines is crafted every day by 140 staff delivering compelling content to over 3.6m adults in Ireland every month. Over the last 22 years they have been continuous...

David Walsh is one of Ireland’s most renowned entrepreneurs. He co-founded Netwatch and as CEO grew it from a small start-up to a truly global organisation employing 560 staff and serving 250,000 customers across four continents, and a leader in proactive video monitoring. At Netwatch, he assembled a world class team and developed a unique culture that led to 68 quarters of continuous growth and i...

Conor McCarthy is an airline industry veteran with over 43 years of experience, a serial entrepreneur and has helped set up several airlines and aerospace companies worldwide. He is the founder of PlaneConsult, an aviation consultancy company, which has, over the past 19 years, worked in many airlines including easyJet, Qantas, Alaska Airlines, Copa, and Thai AirAsia. He has held roles in Aer Ling...

Kim Mackenzie Doyle is an award winning product designer and has held significant roles in both the corporate and non-profit sectors, where she honed skills in leadership, strategic planning, product development and community engagement. With a passion for bridging the gap between industry and education, she is the founder of The B!G Idea, a pioneering non-profit organisation dedicated to empoweri...

Alan Lewis, ex-rugby player, who when his rugby career was cut short at an early stage with injury, turned to refereeing with notable success, and has now refereed at international level, at the 2003 and 2007 Rugby World Cups. But he is even better known as the third most capped player in the history of Irish Cricket playing 121 times for his country between 1984 and 1997. He is one of only six pl...

Well summer is definitely upon us, so the timing of this chat couldn’t be better. On this episode we have brothers Barry and Fergal Doyle who are co-owners of Arboretum. Barry is CEO and Fergal is chief commercial officer. Arboretum Home & Garden Heaven is a second generation, family-owned garden and lifestyle retailer. The multi award-winning business, founded in rural County Carlow in 1977 b...

The 30th episode of ‘Everyday Business with Aidan Donnelly’ is a little different to the norm! We recently staged the first in our ‘Next Step’ series of events in the magnificent surroundings of the old trading floor of The Irish Stock Exchange (Euronext) Building in Dublin, to an audience of business owners and entrepreneurs. Every entrepreneur reaches a point in the evolution of their business w...

Jody Fanagan joined the family business in 1987 as one of three in the 5th generation to run the company – the 6th generation is now also working there. He was made a director in 1994 and then became the Managing Director in 2013.  Fanagan’s is truly a family business established in 1819 and so has been providing excellence in funeral care to families in Dublin for two centuries, looking after 1 i...

Paul McCann first joined Grant Thornton in 2001, and over the next 11 years amassed extensive financial advisory experience. From 2012 -2017 he served two terms as Managing Partner navigating the firm through an accelerated growth period, expanding from 417 to 1,144 people, and growing revenues from €41m to €115.7m. Paul took over as CEO of Ergo in September 2021, bringing with him a reputation in...

There cant be too many people listening to this that have never heard of the Guaranteed Irish mark. This year Guaranteed Irish celebrates 50 years supporting businesses in Ireland. Since it was first established in 1974 as a national symbol of trust and provenance for business in Ireland, Guaranteed Irish has welcomed over 2000 members. With that milestone, I am delighted to have the CEO of Guaran...

Niall Norton began his career training as an accountant and once qualified, followed this up with a stint in Deloitte Corporate Finance before taking up the reigns as CFO with Irish operations of O2, where he was responsible for financial control functions, business process re-design, strategy planning and wholesale. In Feb 2004 he joined Openet as CFO, a company extremely proud of its Irish herit...

For nearly 30 years Pamex has blazed a trail in the Irish Pharmaceutical industry. Its founder Tom Murphy was a leading figure in the pharma industry in the 1980’s and early 1990’s before being made redundant in 1994. Still in his early 40’s and with a young family he found himself on the dole at a time when unemployment in Ireland was at a record high. Using his industry knowledge and backed all...

Derek Murray is one of the World’s leading independent experts on golf club technology and the true art of custom fitting and club making – a passion ignited over 25 years ago, following a visit to the custom fitting tour trucks at the Czech Open. Throughout his career Derek has worked with a ‘who’s who’ list of professional golfers like the late, great Seve Ballesteros, Ian Woosnam, Michael Campb...

When Harry Maharaj completed his Mechanical Engineering degree he got a ‘lucky’ call – his words, not mine – from a recruiter who found my CV online and asked would he consider moving away from engineering and going for an institutional equity sales role in Davy. Eight years later, having built strong client relations in Europe and US, he quit the job, moved home to Kilkenny, and started in the fa...

There can’t be too many people, certainly in Dublin, who haven’t heard of Fitzpatrick’s Castle Hotel in Killiney. And while the building itself has a very long history dating all the way back to 1740, its current incarnation began in 1970 when Paddy and Eithne Fitzpatrick fulfilled a lifetime ambition by buying Killiney Castle and its grounds. They initially opened 1 room at a time, eventually rea...

Having spent 5 years as an Audit and Risk Senior with Deloitte Ireland, Mike Tonery moved to the role of CFO for the Aryzta/Wendy’s joint venture, before beginning his healthcare odyssey. In 2006 he became Senior Financial Controller for the Mater Private Hospital, transforming the finance function to meet the new requirements of the board, syndicate of lending banks, insurers, private equity inve...

Much to his parents’ horror Declan Doyle dropped out of Trinity after one year and went full time managing 10 quick service retail stores in Dublin city centre, going to college by night to get a business degree. Realising accountancy might be a good skill to have, he trained with Grant Sugrue as a forensic accountant, before going into the facilities maintenance industry with Noonan Services Grou...

While food has always been focal to her life, stepping into a commercial kitchen as a teenager really ignited her passion about the industry, and Gráinne Mullins began working part time in the pastry section of some 5 Star hotels. Interrupting a science degree to move to France, she spent two years working in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Aix-en-Provence. Cooking won out over science, with Grái...

The idea of an entrepreneur giving up ‘a good job’ in order to pursue their own venture is hardly an isolated one, but few entrepreneurs would believe their journey could take 20 years, seeing off a dot-com crash, two terrorist attacks on either side of the Atlantic, and a global financial crisis – any one of which probably brought down many SME’s. But that is exactly what today’s guest did. In 19...

Bobby began his career building video games for Nintendo. After that, he founded Eland (an airline tech company) which he sold to SITA before going on to build CarTrawler over 15 years, and led two successful LBOs for the business. For the last 4 years, he’s been building ‘Manna Drone Delivery’ - a business whose mission is to improve the world by making lightning-fast suburban deliveries affordab...

About Leona Maguire Leona entered the professional game in 2018 off the back of a record-breaking collegiate career with Duke University. The proud Irishwoman has been a serial winner ever since she took up the sport in Co. Cavan but it was her decision to move to America, inspired by her life-long ambition to play on the LPGA Tour, that catapulted Leona into the big leagues. As an amateur, she wa...

Having qualified as a chartered engineer, Greg held jobs in the UK and Ireland with various engineering companies before returning to the role of managing director of RPS’s Engineering business in Ireland. During his 3-year tenure as MD, he guided the business from €16m to €24m turnover and helped grow the staff numbers to 300 people. Then in 2005 he went out on his own, setting up Ethos Engineeri...

This week’s guest: Rosy Temple Magee 1866 is a fifth-generation Irish family business with over 150 years’ experience in designing, weaving and tailoring luxurious fabrics and clothing in Donegal.  It was founded on handwoven tweed when John Magee first established a small drapers shop in Donegal, Ireland. In 1900, Robert Temple – John Magee’s cousin and apprentice – bought the business and today...

This week’s guest: David McKernan David McKernan joined Bewley’s straight out of school in 1987 as a sales rep. Through a combination of hard work and an equally hard neck, he worked his way up to the role of Sales and Marketing manager. In 1997, David convinced Bewley’s to make a radical experiment in espresso-based beverages - launching the Caffè La Scala brand. In early 1998, David started to r...