Ballymaloe empire founder, 88, happy with performance

The 88-year old founder of the Ballymaloe food empire, Myrtle Allen, said yesterday she is “very happy” with how Cork’s Ballymaloe House performed last year.

Mrs Allen was commenting on accounts filed by Yeats Room Ltd, the firm behind the award-winning 32-bedroom Ballymaloe House, that show the company incurred a modest loss of €21,364 in the 12 months to Oct 31 last.

The firm had accumulated profits of €2.3m at year end and Mrs Allen said: “Business has been good over the past year, we keep ticking over here.”