New Dinty’s of Union Hall owner in situ for seasonal pick-up in West Cork

The reins have been handed over at one of West Cork’s seasonally busiest food-based bars, Dinty’s of Union Hall.

The bar premises, Dinty Collins in the middle of the coastal village, featured prominently in the movie War of the Buttons, and was put onthe tourist map by owners Dinty and Marion Collins.

A discrete, Saturday classified ad in the Irish Examiner late in summer about an unnamed but lucratively trading West Cork bar sale caught the eye of Martin and Rose O’Donovan, and son Martin Jnr, who sold the Colla House Hotel in Schull in 2005, having run it since 1984.

They viewed Dinty’s the next Tuesday with selling agent John Hodnett of Hodnett Forde who guided it at €350,000, and agreed a deal on the Thursday at an undisclosed price.

Now, a six-week induction and hand-over from owners Dinty and Marion Collins is complete.

New owner is 35-year old Martin O’Donovan jnr, who has returned to Ireland after managing a chain of three Irish pubs in Belgium and one in Spain, and who said he was delighted to get a pub of this calibre and reputation from its owners.

“There’s definitely a pick-up in business and interest in West Cork, I noticed it every time I returned on holidays,” he observed.

The name Dinty Collins will stay over the door, and also remaining will much of the food business ethos, with only minimal changes to a proven business, he added, expecting to employ “upward of 10 locals, on a part-time basis.”

Also recently sold across Glandore harbour this year was the Marine Hotel via Charles P McCarthy with DTZ, making circa €2 million, and the Glandore Inn, also via DTZ and Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill.

Details: Hodnett Forde 023-8833367