Some are Dubliners, others emerged from the boreens. Some are frugal, others are flashy. But all the big builders are driven by the desire to sniff out value and churn it into cash, writes Kathy Sheridan
Frankie Mulleady died young, but among the bogs and drumlins of north Longford, he is remembered as an employer dedicated to creating local jobs in the bleak 1960s and 1970s. The worker he bore in mind is a demographic now, known as Breakfast Roll Man. To Mulleady, he was "the man with the USA biscuit tin [ containing his sandwiches] and the bottle of milk under his arm". Often he was a teenager, from a large family, eking a living in a damp cottage on a subsistence farm, where, as one puts it, "they had to bate the rats out of the barn".
It's hardly a coincidence that some of Ireland's most driven men, faced with the alternative of a life on the lump in Kilburn, emerged from that generation. Or that a disproportionate number of the most successful developers, armed only with national school education and a trade, emerged from the boreens of rural Ireland.
Industry insiders recall the Cosgraves and one half of the old Dwyer Nolan partnership as among the "rare" Dublin successes. "They're rare because the Dublin man was cushioned by his mammy," says a developer, only half-jokingly. "In the country, it was a case of survival. You had to go to ugly places like the bog, snag turnips, tramp hay, spread manure. Fellas who got out of the west always found things easier after that." Another source says: "Their ethos is still work, work, work. They've never known anything else. They call it 'sweat equity'."
They also had to be sharks, although one developer will concede only that "in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 70 per cent of builders in Ireland went bust. You couldn't sell a house on the northside in 1985. Builders weren't planting lawns or putting the final top on roads and they got the name of sharks and stroke merchants. A lot of them folded up and went to the UK in 1984-1985."
In the slump, the banks had thrown a wobbly as banks do, and disdained the land banks offered by builders to settle debts. Some had to put their homes on the line, or even sold them, to keep going; others returned to their trade on London building sites. Within a few years, by luck or vision, the same disdained land banks had transmuted into gold dust.
It was what they did with those land banks that gave the trade its murky hue. Men who ran screaming from damp, rural cottages quite possibly saw nothing awry with identikit boxes unsullied by architectural flair, miles from a shop or school. An unholy coincidence of views with local authorities saw much that was of cultural and aesthetic value thrown on the manure heap in those years.
IN THE PUBLIC mind, rezoning, then and now, is the developers' holy grail. "Donations" combined with the schmoozing (race days being a big attraction) of county councillors is the stuff of tribunals. However, an even more significant element is often overlooked, one which necessitates a far higher form of lobbying: the tax incentive.
"A huge amount of investment decisions have revolved around tax incentives," says Ciarán Cuffe, Green Party TD. "These are set by the Department of Finance, together with the Department of the Environment, so it's important for developers to understand the mindset that might lead to those decisions. It's important for developers to be friendly with those in power so that those in power know what they need, in both a practical way and in a slightly darker way, in terms of knowing what's coming down the line . . . It's not that the people who enter the [ Galway races] tent necessarily know what's happening but there's an understanding of the mindset. Almost all the successful developers would have darkened the door of the tent - metaphorically and literally - over the years, though they're probably smart enough not to raise their heads in these past few years." Access to ministers and to senior civil servants, in avowedly pro-builder governments, is a peerless weapon. "Actually, talking to a senior civil servant can be worth more than several senior ministers," says one player.
If the system is considered suspect, it's hardly surprising. Even now, Cuffe suspects "the skulduggery that went on in Dublin in the past is now happening around the country", in the form of "councillors who are also auctioneers, who one day are rezoning land in one part of the town and the next are selling land". The advent of pre-planning application consultations between developers and county planners has also tipped the balance against local residents, says Cuffe. "It means the door is open to the developers and, often, everything is signed off before the locals even know about it . . . When there are difficulties, they find out how to overcome them. Many developers use the services of private planning consultancies. The attitude is 'do it - and I don't want no for an answer'."
It's the fact that these developers are now working in a vastly more sophisticated arena involving state-of-the-art technology, demographics data, planning and PR consultants, while sometimes pretending to be "the fool in the corner in the builder's hat" that makes them so compelling, says one observer. "A lot have this shambolic country way about them. Put them into a boardroom and they look like muckers, but they'd annihilate you."
But, no more than any other trade or profession, no two builder/developers are the same. Of the six featured in our series, five hail from beyond the Pale but only two fit the stereotype of the small farm background, while three have third-level education. Most are relatively low-key, family men who remain married to the same woman they set out with.
On Planet Developer, nouveau riche behaviour can be as remarkable for its absence as its presence. One of Ireland's wealthiest developers has lived in the same modest semi for the past 20 years while being savagely criticised for his blight of shoebox apartments; another had Debbie "Blondie" Harry in to sing at his 50th birthday and Bono to stay at the old thatched homestead in the west, and is admired for his ambitious, stylish projects.
MANY HOLD TIGHT to their county roots and support the GAA team or local choir; most are philanthropic by inclination, some openly, others discreetly. But even the more visible ones are known for quiet good deeds that might, for instance, involve the loan of a top hotel for a charity function. Some have spent millions restoring beautiful old houses to live in; others have built trophy monstrosities.
Among this new Irish aristocracy, where even the most modest of builders has accumulated considerable wealth, some are deeply concerned about the effect on the next generation. Privately, a few say they plan to give much of it away. Some, "though living in palatial homes, live practically deprived existences", says one observer, "to avoid having their children tainted with the scent of a nouveau riche". And others are willing to indulge their offspring with lifestyles, cars and attitudes that hardly bode well for rounded lives.
One (male) observer blames certain spouses for the most obvious excesses : "Vulgarity is the wife with time on her hands - wheeling out Weddings by Franc, going for the Louis Vuitton handbag . . . insisting on a 'celebrity' rugby player for a scion's 21st [ at a cost of €20,000, in one case], or flying in €150,000 worth of orchids for a teenager's birthday."
One developer notes the "older guys never knew anything else but work and they'll never stop no matter how much they make . . . the next generation is going to have the fun". Heirs taking the reins will be closely watched. They have an intriguing act to follow. Among their fathers, adjectives such as generous, loyal, ruthless, obnoxious, low-key and flamboyant can all feature in one description.
But, like any good entrepreneurs, what they all have in common is the ability to sniff out value and churn it into cash, while slashing costs. "None of them is soft and the competition between them is ferocious," says one source. This of course, translates into a gladiatorial "mine is bigger than yours" contest, a bilious spectacle in an industry where a helicopter or two is standard kit, and transatlantic-range private jets are becoming a must-have. So builders of course, were prominent among those testosterone-fuelled, private jet-owners arguing over access to the 66 slots from Dublin airport to Charles de Gaulle airport for the France-Ireland rugby match.
Excess, obviously, is more than just a Louis Vuitton handbag.
THE BIG DEVELOPERS
Monday
Ballymore Properties Building from Ballymun to Bratislava via London
Tuesday
Liam Carroll The shoebox king
Wednesday
The Cosgrave brothers Going for broke on high-profile sites
Thursday
Menolly Homes Commuter housing and strategic development zones
Friday
Bernard McNamara Sights set on large tracts of Dublin's north docklands
Saturday
Treasury Holdings The biggest fish