Sitting in the meeting room of the new Banner Plaza outside Ennis, Co Clare, with a large portrait of the late Chuck Feeney behind him, Supermac’s owner Pat McDonagh lets out a big laugh when asked if he plans to follow in the footsteps of the US philanthropist he admires.
“Well, you know, you never say ‘never’,” McDonagh tells The Irish Times.
McDonagh, who named a conference centre in Limerick’s Castletroy Park Hotel after Feeney last year, may not have the same $8 billion (€7 billion) fortune to give away, but has built a tidy money-making empire.
The restaurants, service stations and hotel group, which he began with one shop in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, in 1978, now has close to €300 million in assets.
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The latest group accounts show it made €314 million in sales and recorded after-tax profits of €39.4 million in 2024. McDonagh says sales rose to around €375 million last year.
At the end of 2024, it was also sitting on retained earnings of €285.9 million and had €139.6 million of cash on its books.
The latest venue opened by the group is the Banner Plaza outside Ennis. It’s the 11th service station McDonagh has opened in Ireland. But he says it may be the last.
He sees better opportunities to grow the motorway services business in the UK and continental Europe than in Ireland and feels it may be easier.
“We are looking for permission in Ballygawley in Northern Ireland because we think it might be easier to get there than here. That would be our first motorway services up there.”
Tough environment
McDonagh feels the need to look abroad due to the costs he incurred in Ennis. He counts his scars from the experience through 27 separate points in a planning timeline he has printed out and brought with him to the interview.
The timeline begins with the first planning application in 2014 and includes setbacks such as appeals to council decisions, several withdrawn applications by McDonagh and two judicial reviews.
One of those legal cases is still ongoing and relates to a Friends of the Irish Environment challenge against Uisce Éireann over the connection of the facility to the Clareabbey Wastewater Treatment Plant, which the environmental group says is “already overloaded”.
The service station, on which construction started in early 2025, was able to open last November without a connection because McDonagh’s company pays €3,000 a week for a temporary wastewater plant on site.
“That’s about €80,000 since November and we’re told it could be next May when the judicial review is resolved. On top of that Uisce Éireann will want a connection fee of €156,000,” McDonagh says.
“If this was an American company trying to set up in Ireland, I wonder would it have been waiting 14 years to get open. The cost of getting planning permission was €2 million, development costs were more than €20 million. If we had done that 10 years ago, it would have been half the price.”
Due to its healthy finances, McDonagh’s group can absorb the costs and few will feel sorry for the businessman making €40 million profit a year.
McDonagh says he raises these issues because he can’t see how new entrepreneurs, with no capital, can start a company.
“We’re lucky enough we can afford to absorb these costs. If I were starting off today, no bank would give me €2 million of a loan to get planning permission. So if I were 25, I’d be on a flight to Sydney or New York or Canada tomorrow morning.”
Growing costs
Patchwork solutions such as the temporary wastewater plant in Ennis are becoming normal across the group, McDonagh says. He also says the need to help staff with accommodation is another cost that has become a necessity.
Last year, it disclosed payments of €7 million annually on staff housing, which included costs for buying and renting homes.
“We’re still buying a few properties here and there. It depends on when we need them. We bought and rented in Ennis for staff of the new plaza,” McDonagh says.
He adds the costs of staff accommodation will be in excess of €5 million.
“It’s a necessity going forward and we have at least 200 beds for staff now, with 12 of them above our O’Connell Street location in Dublin.
“We need to grow that because if you can provide accommodation it eases their fear of coming to Ireland. Ireland has a reputation of accommodation being expensive and not available. But it’s not necessarily all non-national staff – we have Irish staff in some of them as well.”
No exact financial value has been assigned to these homes bought by McDonagh’s group, but at the end of 2024 Supermac’s (Holdings) Limited owned €23.2 million of investment properties, which was €10 million more than five years previously.
Included in that €23.2 million tally are non-residential properties, including the derelict Printer’s Yard property in New Ross, Co Wexford. In recent weeks, Tánaiste Simon Harris announced plans to empower the Revenue Commissioners to impose 7 per cent levies on derelict properties.
McDonagh says the Government needs to “ask the question why are the properties derelict” as opposed to focusing solely fining people.
“In a lot of cases, buildings are derelict because of local government policies. Most towns around the country have accessibility issues because of restrictions on parking and the cost of parking, making it difficult for the customer to get into the town.”
He says that with disposable income tight, people make the “no-brainer” decision to go to a retail park or shopping centre instead.
“Town shops are closing in smaller towns and that’s why they’re becoming derelict. It isn’t viable to invest in it if the people aren’t there or if the business isn’t there.
“Barbers, vape shops, nail bars, the high-margin businesses, are the only ones that can afford to open on high streets. Other traditional shops can’t, which is sad to see.”
No fun
Lengthy planning procedures, trips to the courts over insurance claims and costly workarounds to keep the lights on have led McDonagh to a belief he repeats many times during the interview.
“The fun is going out of business. I see smaller businesses just throwing in the towel.”
Asked what he previously found fun about business, he can’t quite pinpoint what he used to love, but feels it’s not the same any more.
Would the lack of fun make the 73-year-old consider planning his exit from the group?
“I’ll tell you about that in a few years’ time,” he says with a grin.
In 2024, McDonagh and his wife Una, who co-own Supermac’s, received a €2 million contribution to their pension pot from the group on top of their combined €150,000 directors’ fee.
It was the largest payout they have taken from the group in more than a decade. Is this the groundwork being prepared for a succession plan? Is there someone working in the group who could pick up McDonagh’s mantle?
“I’ll tell you, with all due respects, even if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”
