TRADE NAMES:What started off as a part-time business based on hard physical labour has evolved into a company employing over 150 involved in high-profile restoration work

DAN MCMONAGLE is a man who knows a thing or two about the kind of hard work traditionally known to break backs. That his company's known the length and breath of the land, as well as abroad, is down to his tireless wielding of pick and axe and crowbar to quarry and break stone in the years before such activity was either fashionable or profitable.

That and the Donegal gene that thrives on a challenge. Dan McMonagle, with his wife Anna and sons Michael and Daniel, is McMonagle Stone of Mountcharles, Co Donegal, a company at the cutting-edge of restoration as well as building in stone, responsible for many a building in the new Ireland and for the unparalleled restoration of timeless older buildings.

He has a Donegalman's diffidence about telling his own story; quietly proud, deeply pragmatic and putting all success down to hard work. He is, of course, right on all counts.

He says it all began in 1974 when he began quarrying stone in the old sandstone quarry on the family farm lands. There's a case to be made for an earlier beginning: stone has been quarried and exported to England from the Mountcharles area since the 19th century; Dublin Castle too was built with stone from the area, so was Letterkenny Castle.

It was part-time at first, the farm still a priority, his brother Cathal helping with the business side of things for a short time.

"It was tough going at the beginning," he admits, "working manually with axes and crowbars. We're still splitting stone by hand. A quarry is like a frozen sliced pan, you have to separate the slices and each fits a different purpose, being of different thickness."

He built up a customer base and the company grew. And grew.

"You do it by going out and meeting people," Dan says "and by meeting architects. Architects are important, very concerned these days with restoration and getting buildings right for their environment. In the first few years we did entrance walls for houses, then small porches, walls around gardens, then paving. The Burlington Hotel was an early job. We did the stonework in the bars and the quartzite tiles on the floors as well as door surrounds."

Between 1974 -1980 McMonagle Stone worked mainly in Donegal, the surrounding border counties and Northern Ireland where they "built a few stone houses. We became popular and in the mid 1980s got machinery and began cutting paving stone. I employed one man, and then another as things grew. We have over 150 employed today. Last year, when we were working on Lough Eske Castle Hotel, we had 175."

The company opened its first sandstone quarry in 1974 and first quartzite quarry in 1976; today it has four quarries in Donegal. In 1984 McMonagle Stone began building for its own needs, starting with what Dan calls "a shed. In 1998 we opened our main quartzite quarry in the Glencolmcille area; that's where our exports go from today. We cut and chip ornamental quartz there, and have a set-up too which cleans up waste.

"We went into the housing market in a big way from the mid-1990s. Once the economy began looking up the land and houses and demand was there. We do houses all over Ireland now and have just started one in France, a holiday home in sandstone for an Irish businessman. We did a lot of work on the K Club, on Dún Laoghaire Golf Club and on Castleknock Hotel. We get limestone and slate from quarries in Mayo, Roscommon and Clare. I never thought," he says with surprise, "that it would grow the way it did. You grow yourself, and develop with a business as it goes along."

Stone, he says, "has to be matched to the project. Architects are really educated now, like us all, about the environment and its needs. You don't want to do a project in the wrong stone."

Another reality has brought change to the stone business too.

"Irish stone and quarrying is expensive and can't compete with stone from abroad. It's being left in quarries because people can't afford to take it out. We're not a low-cost country any more; other countries have the manpower and produce stone more cheaply. We're one of the country's big importers of Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Brazilian, Portuguese, Polish and Norwegian stone. It all complements our own stone and gives customers a bigger choice. But Donegal quartz, which we quarry, is still a prestige product."

The company is moving more into restoration, and closer to Dan McMonagle's heart too. "There are so many old buildings needing restoration," he says, "and we're doing a lot of that kind of work now. We did the exterior on Bundoran Chapel and on another chapel outside Omagh. We did Swords Castle and Donegal Castle and we did Lough Eske Castle Hotel last year."

This last is a source of pride to Dan McMonagle. "It was a challenge, really in ruins. It's nice to get involved in restoring a 16th century castle, good to be associated with that kind of work, bring something back that was written off. We'd a very tight time-table and finished the job on time, about 18 months from start to finish."

There have been buildings on the Lough Eske site for 200 years but things had reached such a sorry state that old trees growing from the centre of the castle had to be carefully removed so as not to cause further damage before work could begin. The huge McMonagle job restored and converted the ground floor, created a golfers pool room and library in a smaller building, turned a range of outbuildings into 14 bedroom suites - keeping existing walls and openings - linked a new building in which is a restaurant, kitchen, function and meeting rooms, and erected new bedroom blocks which meet the old garden wall and form an internal garden. Former greenhouses were rebuilt as a spa. McMonagle Stone worked closely with Architect Caroline Dickson of Derry, not for the first time either, as they've worked happily together on other projects.

Dan says that they're determined to "go down the restoration road now, specialise in that kind of work. Most of our workers do restoration work. About 40/50 per cent of them are foreign, a lot Polish, and trained when they come to us. The younger men - they're all men - have good English and lots of computer skills. Here in Donegal, too, the trade of stonemason is returning and people are taking night classes during the winter. An old stone building will always stand the test of time."

He still farms: that's the work thing - only the farming is part-time. "Everything's turned around over the years," he says, happily. He doesn't see the company going out of the family. "Anna's great," he says of his wife and co-director, "and we're glad the two older boys have an interest. Michael is the sales manager and Daniel is in general operations. We've two girls, too; Ann who teaches in Dublin and Cathy studying law in Galway. Our youngest son, Mark, is in Australia. There's plenty of work for a long time to come for the company."