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Times
a day ago
- Business
- Times
Landing the Lidl deal showed our fish firm wasn't small fry
Things are going swimmingly for Colman Keohane, managing director of Keohane Seafoods. The family fish business, run by Keohane and his brother Brian, recently signed a €30 million deal with the retailer Lidl. The company was set up in 2010 by the brothers' father, Michael, who had previously run an aquaculture venture, specialising in mussels, that he subsequently sold. Keohane, the eldest of five, grew up helping his father out, 'roped in from the age of 12', he says. 'Before that I'd have been sent to my mother's family, who were farmers in Blarney, to pick stones.' It developed a work ethic that has stood him in good stead. After studying accountancy in college — light relief by comparison — he returned to Blarney in the early Noughties to open a fish shop. Pretty soon he had a thriving wholesale business, supplying hotels and restaurants too. 'We were one of the first swanky fish shops, with wines and artisanal products,' he says. Things got boomier through the Celtic tiger, but in the crash that followed he entered choppy waters as restaurants struggled. 'There was a lot of bad debt,' Keohane recalls. • Ireland's 100 best restaurants for 2025 His father's idea to set up a new family business in the depths of a recession was only the latest in a list of entrepreneurial activities. 'Dad had done every species of fish in his time, from prawns to white fish, to crab and mussels, always buying, processing and selling it on. That was his strength — finding opportunities, spotting the trend and producing the quality. At the time, quality pre-packed products were only coming into the market here and have since grown and grown.' His father has a number of patents under his belt, including one for vacuum-packed mussels. He was innovative in other ways too; for example, he was the first processor to market here with 'skin film' packaging. 'It's where the film drapes over, say, your salmon darne. It was a trend that was happening at the time in Europe and presents the products really well,' he says. When they set up Keohane Seafood in 2010, with a view to selling pre-packed fish for the retail market, the family already had strong connections with the fishermen at Union Hall and Castletownbere in west Cork. 'We were in a location where all the fresh fish was being landed and we already had good relationships. But the idea for the business was to go where there was more population, so we started out in a 3,000 sq ft unit in Cork city,' he says. They landed SuperValu as their first customer, quickly followed by Dunnes and Lidl. In 2015 they opened a second factory in Bantry. Pretty soon the bulk of the company's revenues came from providing white-label solutions to retailers, with added-value inputs such as marinades and seasonings. 'At the time retailers were shifting away from loose fish counters and we were offering a microwavable product that was completely new,' he says. 'Right now it's all about meal solutions, with ready-to-cook being the big trend,' Keohane adds. To sate demand the company has just invested in a third factory, also in Bantry, specially kitted out to produce ready-to-eat meals. In total the business employs 285 people and is growing. The key to its success is simple, he reckons. 'We produce to a very high quality, all the time, and we have a strong innovation culture. Last year alone we delivered 70 new products to market.' Thanks to customers such as Lidl, it has also been able to grow exports too. It sells into the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Determined to develop the food service offering once more, it's all hands on deck for the family and their growing team, Keohane says. 'People are excited by the growth.'
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Irish Times
Woman jailed for driving at garda and carrying him a distance on bonnet of car
A 42-year-old woman who drove at a garda and carried him more than 200m on the bonnet of her car has been jailed for two years, after a judge heard that the injured party wakes up in pain every morning. Áine O'Connor of Riverview Estate, Tower, Co Cork, pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to the charge that she endangered Garda Karol Mellamphy at Cloghroe, Blarney, Co Cork on October 26th, 2023, contrary to section 13 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997. O'Connor intentionally or recklessly drove a car at Garda Mellamphy, knocked him on to the bonnet of the car and continued to drive for a distance carrying him on the bonnet before stopping, which created a substantial risk of death or serious harm to him. Garda Eric Stafford told the court that Garda Mellamphy was off duty but wearing some items of his uniform and driving through Tower village at around 7.30am on the morning in question when he was clipped by a red Renault Megane. The car didn't stop, so he pursued the car towards Cloghroe. READ MORE Garda Mellamphy caught up with the Megane and 'exited his vehicle and approached the Renault Megane where there were two males and a female. He identified himself as a garda and the two males, who did not believe him, assaulted him,' said Garda Stafford. 'Áine O'Connor got into the driver's seat and tried to flee. Garda Mellamphy stood in front of the car and directed her not to drive the car. She drove straight at him, knocked him on to the bonnet of the car and she drove towards Cloghroe village with the guard on the bonnet before stopping.' At that point, the two men fled the vehicle, but O'Connor stayed in the car as Garda Mellamphy phoned for assistance. O'Connor was arrested at the scene. Pleading for leniency, defence counsel Marjorie Farrelly SC said that her client was intoxicated at the time and was deeply remorseful for her actions on the night. She had written a letter of apology to Garda Mellamphy and she had since engaged with the probation services. Judge Dermot Sheehan said it was a very serious matter and reading Garda Mellamphy's victim-impact statement, it was clear that the experience of being carried on the bonnet, hanging on for his life, had had a significant and continuing impact on him physically and psychologically. As the garda was being carried on the bonnet, he 'wondered how it would end and whether he would survive. Every day he lives in pain – he wakes in pain, walks in pain and goes to bed in pain'. He accepted that it was a split-second decision to drive at Garda Mellamphy and that she had not headed out that morning intending to injure the officer, but she did know that he was a garda as he had identified himself to her, so that was an aggravating factor. He said he believed that the offence merited a headline sentence of three years but taking into account the fact that O'Connor had entered a signed plea of guilty and spared Garda Mellamphy having to testify in a trial, he said he would suspend 12 months, leaving her with two years to serve.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Is Irish America in decline?
For Irish politicians, the annual trip to America to mark St. Patrick's Day is usually about as low-risk and high-reward as anything in public life. The presentation of a bowl of shamrock had muted beginnings: In 1952 Irish ambassador John Hearne sent a gift to President Harry S. Truman, who was out of town at that time but sent a warm note of thanks. Four years later, John Costello became the first prime minister of Ireland to present the shamrock in person to President Dwight Eisenhower. It was Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald in the 1980s who began regularly making the trip to Washington in person. This relationship has traditionally been win-win. Successive Irish heads of state have banged the drum for American investment in Ireland, while presidents have been able to parade their Irish ancestry and Blarney stone bonhomie in front of Irish American voters. Gradually it has become a significant event for Northern Ireland's leaders too. The prime minister of Northern Ireland, aristocratic Anglo-Irish Terence O'Neill, visited Washington in 1964, but until 1999 it was only Nationalist and Republican leaders who found a welcome. Since then, intermittently, first ministers and deputy first ministers have represented the devolved Northern Ireland executive. This year, everything changed. If you are willing to take at face value President Bill Clinton's tenuous claims of Irish lineage, President Trump is the first chief executive since Eisenhower to have no familial links with the Emerald Isle, and inevitably does not have the instinctive attachment to Ireland and Irish America of some of his predecessors. Of the 45 men to have held the presidency, 23 had Irish roots — mostly Protestant Ulster-Scots. Joe Biden, although only five-eighths Irish, positively weaponized his identity, often quoting W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Two years ago, Biden dismissed a question from the BBC with the scornful response 'BBC? I'm Irish.' (I described the effect of this identity on his presidency in 2023.) But it has not simply been an issue of a new president who is cooler towards Ireland. In February, Northern Ireland's Nationalist SDLP party, then the Republican Sinn Féin party, announced that it would boycott the Saint Patrick's Day celebrations in Washington. The two parties, both of which support a united Ireland, made the decision in protest at the Trump administration's stance on the war in Gaza, in which they have been sharply critical of Israel's conduct. Sinn Féin's boycott meant the absence of the first minister of Northern Ireland, Michelle O'Neill, who said she was 'taking a stand against an injustice which I see unravelling every day from the dangerous rhetoric from this new U.S. president.' It also ruled out the party's president and leader of the opposition in the Irish Parliament, Mary Lou McDonald. Trump sees little more than Ireland's membership of the European Union, an organization he hates and claims was 'formed to screw the United States.' He is imposing severe tariffs on EU imports and has already announced additional taxes on imported cars and car parts. Ireland has been offered no exceptions. Micheál Martin, who began his second stint as the Republic of Ireland's prime minister three days after Trump's inauguration, made the traditional visit to the White House, even if others chose to stay away. The atmosphere, however, was worlds away from the usual merriment and backslapping. Although Trump made some semi-humorous but barbed remarks about his guest, his perennial sense of injustice was barely beneath the surface. 'We do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. They took our pharmaceutical companies away from presidents that didn't know what they were doing … This beautiful island of five million people has got the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry in its grasps … We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland. But we do want fairness.' Martin wisely said little. And in simplistic terms, Trump was not wrong. More than half of Ireland's 72 billion euro ($77.5 billion) in exports to the U.S. last year consisted of medical and pharmaceutical products made in Ireland by American-owned firms such as Eli Lilly and Pfizer. Trump plans tariffs on this sector too, and the effects on the Irish economy could be devastating, perhaps shrinking its GDP by 3.7 percent over the next five to seven years and costing 80,000 jobs. Many presidents would have hesitated before risking the wrath of Irish American voters by punishing the old country like this. Trump, however, appears typically unperturbed, telling reporters 'the Irish love Trump' — 'we won the Irish with a tremendous amount … I got it locked up pretty good.' It may be more complicated than that. It is now more than 400 years since the first significant Irish immigration to North America, and 176 years since the first Kennedy arrived in Boston. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a fifth-generation Irish American. Statistics show that Irish Americans earn more than the average Americans and are better educated. Perhaps it is simply no longer possible to see 'Irish Americans' as a monolithic voting bloc; instead they will react to any Trumpian conflict with the Emerald Isle according to a range of interests and identities. Once so proudly hyphenated, many may now simply see themselves as 'Americans.' Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
