My day

Maura tells us about her day...

IT TAKES ME five minutes to drive to work, at the Irish National Heritage Park, in Ferrycarrig, from my home, in Wexford town, for 9am. We open at 9.30am. My first job is to take out the floats to the four tills. Then I’ll go say hi to our chef.

We have 16 staff, and, apart from the chef, we all do everything. Our tour guide has been with us since the centre opened, 22 years ago, for example, and right now he is in on pot-wash duty. All of us can turn our hand to anything.

We are a not-for-profit organisation set up by Wexford County Council, and we have to pay our own way. We do that by being flexible and multitalented. It also means no two days are the same.

Then I’ll go into my office, which is really a cubbyhole, to check e-mails. We get queries from senior citizens’ groups or school tours, and people looking for historical information.

After that I might have a meeting with a sales rep about a new product for the gift shop. Then I’ll walk around the park, which is a mile long. It takes me half an hour, and I stop and talk to everybody I meet on the way, whether maintenance staff or visitors. I’m a huge talker.

I do it because I want to check everything is okay, but really it’s because I love fresh air. My favourite spot is the Viking site overlooking the river. If I’ve gone Awol for any length of time, that’s where I’m to be found. It’s where I go to gather my thoughts.

Then I’ll head back to clear tables in the restaurant or work in the gift shop, letting the staff off for their lunch breaks.

I’m involved in a lot of organisations, from the county enterprise board to Wexford Tourism to the local chambers of commerce, so I might have a meeting to go to for those. I go to everything, because the key to building a business is networking.

Normally, by the time it’s my turn for a lunch break it is 4pm, which means it’s really my dinner. That’s why I’m like a whippet.

We open at night for private functions, and if we have one on we all come back to work. We have a lovely lakeside terrace, which is gorgeous for weddings and events, especially in the summer.

If there’s nothing in the evening I finish up at 5.30pm and go home and cook for my kids. I’ll always sit down to watch the nine o’clock news, but then it’s back up to start cleaning up and getting ready for school tomorrow, before starting it all again.

Maura Bell is manager of the Irish National Heritage, Park in Wexford, Ferrycarrig, Co Wexford, inhp.com