Business community leaders top pay league
The wealthy trio top the Irish earners’ list just ahead of the high-flying Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s 41-year-old chief executive whose gross pay eclipses, for the first time, the airline’s founder Tony Ryan.
The business community dominate the Irish pay league but the nouveau riche from the sporting and entertainment worlds are hot on their heels.
Among the new entries into this year’s elite earners’ list are Riverdance originators Moya Doherty and John McColgan, who also control the country’s biggest independent TV programme-making company, Tyrone.
They are 15th and 16th on the Irish list with gross earnings of 16.2m euro, just ahead of Donegal-born singing sensation Enya (Eithne ní Bhraonáin) who also finished above the U2 quartet. Bono and the lads who racked in almost 12m euro last year, slipped from 13th to 21st on the list with an estimated 8m euro income.
However, the talented Hollywood actor Colin Farrell, at No 18, grossed 15.17m euro. The young Dubliner is rapidly emerging as one of Ireland’s biggest exports in the entertainment industry.
Another famous export who performs on a different world stage is Roy Keane.
Despite his trauma on and off the field this season, his earnings until the end of September puts him on the new entry list as Ireland’s 25th highest earner with 10m euro, mainly from his Manchester United contract.
Keane made it into Britain’s top 100 earners. He grossed twice as much as his boss Alex Ferguson but was well adrift of England international pair, club mate David Beckham and Liverpool’s Michael Owen, whose off-field endorsements propelled them into Britain’s top 50.
Tax exile Eddie Irvine has a pad in Killiney along with homes in Milan, London and New York. He doesn’t qualify for the Irish list, but his stg£7m income puts him at No 95 in the British list. Overall, Ireland’s top 25 earners grossed a staggering 828m euro in pay, dividends and other earnings.
The highest new entry is Co Louth’s Brendan McDonald, at number 6, who earned 36.35m euro due to the estimated 23m euro pre-tax sale of his electrical appliances franchise.
The sole representative in the IT sector in the top 25 earners was ex-chief executive of Parthus, Brian Long, whose Dublin-based microchip design business merged with a Californian company. He plummeted from No 11 to No 20 this year due to reduced earnings of 11m euro.
Meanwhile, the other new entries in the top 10 were businessman Peter Gleeson, who grossed 31.82m euro, pharmaceutical pair, Martin Bates and Fergus Hoban, with a shared 23.7m euro due to the sale of their Unicare shares
In at No 10 was Howard Kilroy, ex-Jefferson Smurfit president who, like Gleeson, enjoyed a windfall due to the sale of the company.
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