Brosnan claims businesses in west being forgotten by the Government
The former Kerry Group chairman was speaking at the County and City Enterprise Boards forum “What are the jobs of the future?” in Cork’s Clarion Hotel yesterday.
“The west is being slowly forgotten by the Government,” said Mr Brosnan. “I’m on a mid-west task force in the wake of the Dell closure. The only route forward we can give to young people is to stay in education until the storm blows over.”
Mr Brosnan recalled the humble origins of Kerry Group. Now one of Ireland’s top three companies, in 1972 the only bank willing to invest in the company was Foir Teoranta, which was known as “the bank of last resort”. The bank gave the group an IR£200,000 (€253,949) loan and the rest is history.
Mr Brosnan also recalled how, in the early 1980s the then taoiseach Charles Haughey had sanctioned a drive by a group of local business people to build Kerry Airport.
“An airport was a necessity, but nobody was going to give it to us, or build it for us,” said Mr Brosnan. “We created the Kerry Airport board, a team of Kerry people in Dublin and London and elsewhere. We had to build the airport for ourselves.
“I can talk about the mind set of the mid-west, because Kerry and north Kerry in particular is faced with the same problems. The difference is that the rest of the mid-west has always looked to outsiders to come in and solve their problems for them, like giving them the Shannon stopover. Kerry is different in that it helps itself. We always set out to solve our own problems.”
The entrepreneur said that Kerry’s problems have been caused by the banking crisis and by the lack of funding.
Seminar attendees were also addressed by Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, Fine Gael TD Jimmy Deenihan, and Marie Lynch of Shannon Development. Irish Examiner business editor, Conor Keane, chaired the event.
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