Episode 3: Culture, Creativity & Confidence

In Episode 3 of Business Connections, former Irish rugby international player Gordon D’Arcy and National Opera House Chairman Paul Hennessy join Paula Roche, CEO of County Wexford Chamber, to explore how excellence in sport and the arts has helped put County Wexford on the world stage.
 

Gordon and Paul reflect on what elite performance, whether in sport or in the arts, teaches us about resilience, ambition and teamwork, and why success is often built, not just in the boardroom, but on pitches and stages, and in communities.  

About the guests: 

Gordon D'Arcy went from playing for Wexford Wanderers to earning over 250 caps for Leinster Rugby and representing Ireland more than 80 times. Today, he combines business, media and entrepreneurship with lessons learned from elite sport. 

Paul Hennessy played a leading role in delivering the National Opera House — a €32 million project that transformed Wexford’s cultural and economic landscape and placed the county firmly on the international stage. 

Business Connections is supported by LEADER. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

My biggest competitor has always been myself. In Wexford, I had a field behind our house, and I just used to do laps of that, building endurance, building endurance. There's nobody making you do it. Who you are is what you do when nobody's looking.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

We can actually produce a business, we can produce an opera house, we can produce an opera festival that is capable of standing up there with the best in the world. That gets into your thinking, and there's a real can-do sense that comes out of living in a place where there is that kind of achievement that everybody sees every day.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Welcome to Business Connections, a podcast brought to you by County Wexford Chamber. In this episode, Paula Roach is joined by two guests whose careers span the highest levels of sport and culture, and who proved that from Wexford, with hard work, discipline, and big thinking, ambition can reach the world stage. Former Ireland international rugby player Gordon Darcy went from playing for Wexford Wanderers to earning over 250 caps for Leinster, representing Ireland on the world stage over 80 times, and now building a career in business and entrepreneurship. He shares what Elite Sport teaches us about leadership, resilience, performance under pressure, and why community sport is one of the strongest foundations that any county can have. And Paul Hennessy, who is the driving force behind Wexford's National Opera House, a 32 million euro project once considered an outrageous ambition, which today has firmly placed Wexford on the world stage and generated significant income for the local economy. Paul tells the story behind this landmark project and the critical role that Wexford's strong sense of community, creativity, and confidence played in its success. Together they talk about the powerful connection between sport, the arts, and enterprise, and how success is not just built in boardrooms, but on pitches, in communities and on stages across the county.

SPEAKER_04 1:58

Gordon, Paul, thank you for joining us here today on the County Wexford Chamber podcast on Hill Street in County Wexford. Gordon, starting with you, from Ferns, went on to have an exceptional elite rugby career, Grand Slams, Heineken Cups, Leinster, I think over 250 camps with Leinster, and a hell of a lot more. And now you're back on the business side of things.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, born and bred in Wexford. Um and then obviously moved it up and when I turned professional. So I think it was two weeks after my leave and start turned professional. So Rich had a really lovely career. Retired in 2015 and had a few little bits and pieces since then, and now working insurance with locked on insurance brokers.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

What a transition.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, um but like listen, it's one of those things, it comes to a natural end. Every you know, the average career in rugby in Ireland is about eight years. So I was very lucky. I got to play 19 seasons, just kind of just under 20 years. So by the time I was finished, I think everybody was happy to see the back of me. But like my body had just given up at that point.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

250 caps.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, 250 caps for Leinster, 80 something for Ireland, a couple of Lions caps and barbarians and bit of everything, Lansdown caps, Wexford Wanderers played for the senior team for Wexford Wanderers, of course. My late dad has a very interesting run-in with Wexter Wanderers at one point because I have an older brother who's five years older than me. Okay, and I ended up playing for the senior team when I was about 14, and you have to think be 16 to pay for the senior team. And the story was that they mistook me for my brother Ian.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

And there's a kind of a grey area about whether whether I was mistaken or not. My dad wasn't happy one way or another. So the club never saw the relationship with the club, but it was one of those things. So I made my debut for Wexford Wanderers when I was about 14.

SPEAKER_04 3:49

Okay, and you were travelling from Ferns down to No, we were living in Wexford at the time. Oh, you were living in Wexford, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, so we um um my dad was in the Bank of Ireland, so he was the branch manager in Ferns, then that got closed, and we moved to Wexford Towns. We used to live out by out uh by New Bay House. So we lived in Inscorthy and Buntlot. So I went to primary school in Buntlothe. Uh we lived in Escorthy, and then we moved to Wexford when uh the house when we were building the building the house. So uh all over the place. Through Wexford man, so very much so.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Paul yourself, you started with PWC, you were a PWC for a long time before kind of becoming I I actually wasn't born in Wexford.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Yeah, I was born in Waterford and I moved to Wexford back in the eighties, um when I was asked to take responsibility for the the practice that was here and and to build it into a PWC practice, which which I did. Um but I do remember, you know, when I'd agreed to come down here um before I actually started driving driving to Wexford and getting out of the car and stopping and looking down at Wexford and wondering what Wexford and I might make of each other. But I had no real sense as to how Wexford would have really, you know, enhanced my life as a place to live at that time and that uh you know it would have such an impact on my family. But I do remember that moment stopping and thinking and wondering, you know, I'm going to do something here, is it going to work out? It's worked out fine.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

Fine. Any bit more than fine.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Yeah, well, it worked out well.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Is there any divided loyalties and and the hurling comes around?

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Or yeah, yeah, that's that's that's one of the areas. What jersey are you wearing? Um I I have worn purple and gold, and uh I have worn the blue and white as well. So um Okay, we'll allow that. Yeah, I think I'll keep that particular entitlement if it's okay with everyone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

So a lot of people do know you from PWC, obviously, but um you're here today in the capacity of the National Opera House. Yeah. You got involved in very, very early. And I don't know if you're gonna be you might be too humble to say this, but I think you were the main driving force behind what is now the National Opera House, the 32 million investment.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah, I I mean I I got involved in the festival back in in 89, and um during that period we reached that crisis that the old Theatre Oil was not fit for purpose and it was falling down and was being held together by just the good offices of some builders and tradesmen who were just digging us out of holes all the time, and it was very clear we had to do something. But the the ambition to build an opera house of the quality of what the National Opera House is now, that was an outrageous ambition at the time. We had no money. Um we didn't have enough of the site, we didn't have anything, and we s we set out to to make something happen. Um and it took us thirteen years from concept to delivery, and I was part of all of that. Um and particularly then when the building program happened, uh I became chair just in around two years before we actually started the building. So in in that acute period of planning and preparation and throughout the building, and making sure that the building was delivered on time and on budget, and on time was a real issue because the festival happens at a particular time, it had to be ready. It was an extraordinary project, and we had some really great people working on it, led by the OPW, supported by the department, uh, and we had a really strong board who were convinced that we were doing something here that was quite unique and you know really committed to making this happen. And uh we opened the the National Opera House on the eighth of September in two thousand and eight, and the following Friday Lehman Brothers collapsed. And we were immediately into the you know financial crisis of two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine. So it's the worst time ever to open a business, and essentially that's what we were doing is opening a new business. It was the worst time ever to open a new business. We had this huge facility, we're trying to work out how how does this work, and suddenly audiences disappeared, funding disappeared. It was a really difficult period to get the place up and running the way we wanted it to. But but strong period strong pe people get you through the big problems, and and that's what happened. Uh and and we got through it, and it's now it's now thriving.

SPEAKER_04 8:19

Yeah. You mentioned um outrageous ambition, and I think that applies to both of you. Some people would say that outrageous ambition in terms of a 32 million development and you in your career going from Wexer Wanderers to um national level and international level, really, um Gordon. Um, what kind of spur do you want to have that drive that you could go that far, Gordon?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Um I think there's uh uh serendipity plays a kind of a role in in all of these projects, um, sorry, in in in every in everybody's life. So whether it's a sports person's or it's the opera house coming together, because like I remember walking around the streets of Wexford as a as a as a as a young lad in the mid-90s, and exactly that I remember the opera house, and I remember it being you know, stuck together with good intentions and uh and publicum. You know, if someone hit it, if someone hit it with a slitter, it might have it might have uh collapsed. Yeah, and I suppose there's a a sense of pride that you take with that the opera festival uh has been so important to Wexford and intrinsic to actually everything that Wexford does. Because you see these projects pop up everywhere, so like the Dunleary Library, you know, they become quite iconic buildings, and I think we can say that about the Wexford Opera House now as well, and how important it actually is to Wexford, and yeah, it might you know it really comes into its own once a year, but you know, in 2008, it probably didn't, you know, obviously not the the the the the the backdrop um and it took a few years for it to come forward, but I think the um the way it came forward, uh we have this like iconic building in Wexford, and as we've seen over the last kind of 10, 20, 30 years, having little points of differentiation about your county and your town are really, really important. Um I suppose like the ambition for me when I left um Wexford Ronders put the ball in my hand for the first time. We were talking about this. James O'Connor from Greenacres, his dad, he put the ball in my hand for the first time. He's also the man who showed me that uh when it was too cold and raining outside, you cut two, three holes in a bin bag and you put that under your jersey, and that'll keep you warm. Yeah, that's that's that's proper that's proper uh instruction.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

That's real instruction.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

So yeah, well, it's it it got us it got us through because there was no danger of cancelling. You didn't we didn't cancel games or training back then. So yeah, so James O'Connor would put that in. I went to a boarding school and obviously there's very little to do in boarding school, um, so there wasn't devices and anything like that. So I spent an awful lot of time practicing something that I would turn out to be reasonably okay at. But I think you do need to have that to succeed in sport, to succeed with any of these projects, you need to have a kind of an inner drive, and almost you don't get swayed by other people's view on you. You need to have a kind of that North Star yourself and just be belligerent enough to go to keep chasing it.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

But I think that's in the psyche here, Gordon, really established in the psyche. And I think because Wexford has produced this opera festival which stands up iconically in the world, we have created something which is internationally recognised as best in class. And you get used to that feeling that we can do something, you know, we can actually produce a business, we can produce an opera house, we can produce an opera festival that is capable of standing up there with the best in the world. And that gets into your thinking, and barriers start to come away as to why can't we do something like this if we set out to do it? There's a real can-do sense that comes out of living in a place where there is that kind of achievement that everybody sees every day. And we have it, you know, we have it in in the story of the of the opera house, the story of the festival. But also, you know, we're producing some of the best writers in in the world in the English language at the moment, and you just kind of think, well, if we can do it in terms of that, why can't we do it elsewhere? Nothing should be seen to be a barrier if the belief is there and you assemble the right kind of people with the drive, you can achieve something. There is a there's a story which is probably well told, about the festival when it started. Uh after the first year, which was only supposed to be a one-year event. Yeah. There was a a meeting of the committee at the time to see, you know, are we going to do this a second time? And it's it's minute here in the minutes of the festival that at that meeting everybody individually said no, we can't do this, it's just too much. So individually everyone said no, and then collectively they resolved to do it anyway. Okay. Now I think in that moment something gets born. And that there there's something there then that becomes uh a nucleus for energy, commitment, emotional investment that doesn't stop.

SPEAKER_04 13:17

But it's the people, isn't it? It it is the people like you you can't do this. And Gordon, you recently attended our chamber presidents' lunch and Dennis O'Brien was speaking, and he kind of said about one person can't do it on their own, or one organization can't do it on their own. Everybody needs to come together, be it offshore renewable energy or be it a development like an opera house, it really is the community.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, it's just listening to Paul talk there, it kind of all needs to align in the same way. You need to have somebody who's very strong a character, strong vision, that piece to actually go, well, actually, I want to drive change, and then that can inspire people and around it. And I think one of the things I've learnt with leadership and particularly in sport and in business, is there will always be people that look to somebody else for direction or for inspiration or for a drive. That's not that's not a good thing, that's not a not a not a bad thing. Some people are doers, some people are thinkers, and some people you know have uh will have different different strengths. But I think when you get to a point where you have that vision and then you have support coming in behind it, and then you have that community basis, that's when good things can really happen. And I think what you s what I've always been amazed about with Wexford um since I've left to pursue uh a sporting career was the amount of people who come back to Wexford um and the energy that they bring when they come back. And I think what we're seeing now is we're seeing a lot of successful entrepreneurs who are going, okay, well, why can't we have that here? You know, Ed Murphy is a great example of that. Um, I've mentioned James as a you know, he's literally anybody every time he leaves the county, it's like he becomes a walking salesperson for the county. Um we've seen there's been so many different examples of it, Cormac Pettit and the Pettit, you know, Liam Griffin and the Neville's you know, you know, it it goes on, and I think that does, and we you know, we're looking at the renewable energy park that is potentially going to be uh built here as well. So there's so many of the interconnector, there's so much um energy around uh Wexford, I suppose hard harnessing it in the right. But I think things are different now because we have having these very successful business people who are coming back to and saying, as you said, Paula, before we we started recording this, and saying they're looking to give back into the county. And I think that becomes really, really powerful because you might have this really optimistic and you might have a really uh energetic group of young people who are just there going, actually, I just need a little bit of direction or experience. You can't buy experience, but you can definitely lean on somebody else's.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

But it's not every place that people want to come back to. That's true, yeah. Um but people do want to come back to Wexford. Just in my own family, I have three grown-up sons who've all gone away. They're all back deciding that Wexford is where they want to live, this is where they want to build their careers, this is where they want to have their their families. And something like that tells you that there is something different here. Um because people do want to come back and people do want to make a contribution. But there's also an openness here that if you do want to come back and make a contribution, that is warmly welcomed and facilitated. Uh and when I came to live here, one of the things that struck me first was this was a really accessible community.

SPEAKER_04 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

People actually welcomed you in if you if they recognized you wanted to make a contribution, that was really welcomed and facilitated, and people supported you. Uh and there's no sort of cliqueishness or sort of barriers to actually being involved. And that's not always the case. And I think that's why a lot of people look about I want to come back because there's something right here. There is something that is a defining characteristic that I have touched into or that it has touched me, and I want to actually give something to that, make my contribution to that, whatever that is, that makes this a different sort of place to live.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

In some ways, you kind of want people to to actually do that, go away for a while to somewhere else, learn new experiences, learn from other people, and then bring it back. Because I think that's where the value really is, isn't it? We don't want to send our people away, we want to retain them here. But in other ways, it brings value back and learnings and experiences, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 17:31

But that's that's the richness, I think, of diversity. Um we live in a much more diverse world now, and our communities are much more diversely composed than they used to be. But if you if you stand back and think about it, uh it's through sport and arts that you integrate communities. So that when people come here and they can participate in something which is a sporting sort of community or an arts community, that's what brings communities together. That gives a glue. And we have it very strongly here. Um and that's why I think people identify with Wexford, like to be involved, feel that their their contribution is welcomed, and believe that they can make a difference and and do make a difference.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Yeah. Gordon, you've seen sport at every level, really, out inside the country, outside the country. What do you think of the Wexford sport scene and not just obviously rugby but hurlin, camoe, everything?

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Um yeah, just uh echo what Paul said. I think where sport is really valuable is at the community level. So I recently just did quite a long cycle from Melrose in Scotland down through Gloucester, Leeds, over to Pembroke, over to Rosslair, and then up to the Viva with the match bowl. So about twelve hundred kilometres raising awareness and money for MD research. So f first and foremost, it's a fundraising event with a bit of cycling, is the way we like to kind of cycling, yeah. I still have a bit of PTSD, I haven't been back on my bike yet. But one of the things that I love about it is the rugby clubs all so we have about 12 to 16 stops along the way, and they're all rugby clubs uh or sporting clubs, some cricket grounds, one is a rugby league ground, um, and usually multi multi-purpose things. The energy in those places is just incredible. And Wexford Wanderers M Lane met us off the off the boat, uh, Corma McPett and he supplied the food to feed all the cyclists. Like it's little things like that that are so important to the fabric of a community. I worked a little bit with Wexford hurling um when Darry Egan was the coach, and I got to see an awful lot of the kind of community hurling as well, and it's so important. But why I suppose the question is why is it important? So kids playing team sports, it's just so important, win together, lose together, to get to understand each other, the social dynamics. Sport is really, really leveling kids that may not be having a great time uh outside, but they can in other areas of their life can just find a safety and a way of expressing themselves in sport that they don't necessarily have in other things, and um and just that yeah, that coming together, there is no right or wrong in sport, it's just it's it's a so it's lovely free in the same way art is it's just a f a free expression, and you just get to have a have a play out. I think the underage sport that's done really, really well when it's not overly focused on winning that can come later. Um I think too many parents, too many coaches put too much focus on it. I think the way where I've seen really successful programs run is when you give k kids the tools to play the sport, they figure out how to express themselves themselves, and then they enjoy the game, and then the competition comes later as they get a little bit as they get a little bit older. And that's how you keep kids involved in sport because the most important thing is keeping kids involved in in sport, and that's what develops. So you have these uh sporting clubs, all the GA clubs are just incredible uh tools. For the business in itself, isn't it? Oh, they're just incredible tools for a community because they're not just where people go to get play sport, they are where they socialise, they become a fabric of a thing. So, like when I lived in Ferns, the community centre was the hub of the town. We used to walk up there, play Babington, but then the next day it would be it'd be uh some sort of a fair on in there. It was used every day, seven days a week, and it was just so important to the fabric of it. And I think Wexford has got a really good balance to that. The community, the GA clubs, particularly the rugby clubs, they get them in. I would always love to see a higher percentage of kids play longer. I think that 13 it's probably 14 15 is for girls as well, is a big drop off for girls, um, and obviously that has a knock on effect to the club and they don't spend as much time there. Keeping girls, particularly in sport, is so important. Um, and I think that's a that's One thing I would love to see in you know in Wexford in other things is keeping girls much longer, playing for sport for uh for much longer.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

But the personal networking that you actually get exposed to by being involved in sport, you can't really create that any other way.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

So you can go to Australia, you can go to Dubai, yeah, you know, uh all my kids play sport. At some point they're gonna travel, they can walk into a hockey club in California, or they can go to a rugby club in Brazil or a netpo, or whatever it might be, and they instantly have a social network. Yeah, it's so valuable. And just and there's also then it's the you know the body positivity that you get from playing sport. Okay, the um the you know, the that the chemical piece that you get from it as well, where you know the endorphins you get from exercise. I've yet to meet somebody who has regretted going for a walk or going playing around a golf or doing playing a game of bass, where they come back in and go, Yeah, I really feel worse after that. You know, even though it's not. Now I may have questioned that at about eleven about eleven o'clock uh last Wednesday evening when it was hammering rain and we'd just done about 300 kilometres. I was questioning whether I'm actually enjoying this or not. But in general, I think it's it's such a pot it's such a positive thing for kids to stay in sport. And then, as I said, the the in the natural way that that feeds into the community.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

I think though, as you say, Gordon, community is such a big part of Wexford. And in the National Opera House, Paul, you would have a lot of community groups in there as well.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Oh yeah, I I mean at an activity level, the Opera House for 25 had activity on its stages for 6.6 days of each week, which is an extraordinary number. Now, when we say activity on the stages means it was either performance or there was a rehearsal for a performance going on. But that's a huge number for any theatre. So in terms of the two theatres that are there, for 6.6 days of each week in 2025, there was activity on the stages. And that activity level now is about 50% is community and 50% is commercial. So if you take the uh commercial stuff, the the venue is now established on the landscape for all touring companies for for touring plays, for touring musicals, um, for touring tribute bands. You know, the opera house will be considered as a venue because of the technical capacity and all of that. But about half of the events that happen there are community events. Uh and they're community events for singing, for uh performance. You have the Wexwood Light Opera Society, the Oyster Lane Society, the Wexwood Drama Festival is in there, uh the Sing Out project, which is in there every year, which brings so many kids into the opera house and gives them a chance to sing in the opera house. And singing in the opera house is an is an extraordinary experience. It it's like playing in a it's like playing in the Aviva. You sing in the opera house, and the you know, the minute you open your mouth, you're hit by the acoustic that comes back. And you know, it's it's by no sort of coincidence that it has been often referred to as the finest small opera house in the world. That was a comment that was first made by a guy called Peter Angie of Carin Angie Theatre Consultants, who were the theatre consultants involved in the project, and they had just completed the opera house in Oslo and the one in Copenhagen, and they did the one in Wexford, and he said one day, you know, I think this is probably the finest small opera house in the world, we got it right here. And I said to him, You sure you want to say that, Peter? Can we quote you? And he thought and he said, Yeah, I think that's okay. Um but I think for kids to come on the stage and sing, you know, on the same uh platform that two or three weeks previously you had some of the finest opera singers in the world singing there, and they come in and they sing and they sing their hearts out. I mean, to sing out is an extraordinary exuberant event of kids coming in and singing over ten days. So when you look at all of those um events, the the way that the community has started to perform in the opera house to the level and variety that it does, it's it's pretty exceptional.

SPEAKER_04 26:11

Yeah. There can be a tendency to see sport and culture and arts as separate from the real economy, the real money-making economy, as people say, I don't see that at all. I think it's a huge contributor to the economy and attracts so many people here. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Well, I think it'd be naive to think that they're not particularly sorry, it's it's not even not even particularly, but um it's probably more visible in towns outside of Dublin when you see like Wexford will effectively be overtaken by the opera festival for those two weeks. Yeah. That's going to be a key driver of it every time there's a and and let's look at the impact that the flaw had for the two years that I was here.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

That's that's grown, yeah. That's grown. I mean, that was an extraordinary experience, but the value to Wexford from a commercial point of view as well as from a cultural point of view, it's quite quite unique.

SPEAKER_04 27:05

It was 70 million in economic value. Seventy million economic value, yeah. Incredible, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 27:10

That's extraordinary.

SPEAKER_04 27:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

But isn't it great to have it?

SPEAKER_04 27:13

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

And I think and and Gordon is right, the festival in a in a shoulder period, you know, between the summer and Christmas, we have this extraordinary festival that brings in a huge input into the area, uh, and there's another spending surge in terms of what happens commercially here. You know, and that that happens throughout the year. Um and I I think there is a business that follows theatre performance. Um and the the business of performing theatre is is a business now. It has to make sense, it has to be financially strong, uh, it has to have support, you have to have the right offerings to bring people in. It's a very disciplined, you know, uh thought process now to make sure that what you're offering is going to be successful from a commercial point of view as well. So I I think the business disciplines there and they they become a focal point then for for people to gather and spend money on enjoyment of things that enrich their lives.

SPEAKER_04 28:16

Absolutely. Because the hospitality and the retail sector sector need it, don't they? They need that sport.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

I think you've got the same parallel then with sport, whether it is amateur or whether it is professional. You know, we just had a six nations there where probably the difference between Ireland finishing third versus second is anywhere from one to one and a half million. And then there probably is additional money from sponsorship from them getting finishing second and getting the triple cray. Thomas Ramos, the French kicker, took a kick. I think the difference between finishing second and first for them was about three million euros, and again, that could be exponentially more depending on sponsorship and uh everything that goes into it. So, like that's that's when you get into the business end of profession. So we we're looking at the Aviva and the sellout and everything in that and going, oh, isn't it great to see Irish role be doing so well? But the actual business piece behind it, because next year is a World Cup year, so the RFU are going to spend roughly, I think, about 25 million euros more next year. So let's just say them finishing second gets nets them an extra five million. Like that's that's huge money in the in the whole piece of going, but it also like what's the positive things you're talking about, the what you have to put on and how you curate the performances because people have to enjoy them and they have to go, you have they have to leave going, I want to come back to this next year. That's the exact same in sport, you are uh brutally judged by your results, and eating bread is soon forgotten. You know, you look at Man United, what they're doing uh in you know, in in soccer, all the success they've had down through the years, but they're having a uh fallow period now, and um it's not it's not good enough. So you look at say uh Irish rugby finishes a Six Nations on a real high, um, and that will probably carry over now into the November series and into the World Cup next year. But a really bad Six Nations next year could dramatically impact how many people travel for the for the World Cup, and then you could look into um say amateurs amateur sport, and this is I suppose why I always feel the hurling and GAA, you have to get that underage piece right, so you have the highest quality players feeding through into the uh into the county teams and into the club teams. Yeah, um the club team so the club teams kind of take care of themselves because they're so intrinsic to the community. You know, there's uh there's almost a badge of honour that required to play for them, and and that I think kind of takes care of itself a little bit. When you get to the uh say the Wexford Hurling and Wexford GAA, you want those sellout parks, sell-out matches in Wexford Park, and you know, you you need success at that level, and success is relevant to the players at their disposal, but you know, at the Camogi and the Hurling particular, you want people showing up to those games, exactly as Bo said, spending money in a in a way that's giving them real enjoyment um and gives the economy a little bit of surge, and that's everything going right. And that's you know probably something we haven't we haven't had maybe uh enough of in the in in in the in the last while.

SPEAKER_04 31:30

Gordon, you mentioned the judgment that you're performing really for a whole audience or a park or a stadium. How do you deal with that pressure of performing for such a large audience?

SPEAKER_02 31:40

The Ramos cake.

SPEAKER_04 31:42

I couldn't do it. That's why I didn't play team sports.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, like I I think you know, when you go back to one of the things you said you asked questions you asked at the start, and it's like you know, having that inner drive, you know, whether it's setting up PwC, whether in in Wexford, whereas getting the right people to drive a project like the Wexford Opera House, you have to have that piece in you. Um, and you know, my biggest competitor has always been myself. Yeah. I used to in Wexford, I had a field, about this five-acre field behind our house, and I just used to do laps of that, put the Walkman on, whatever mixtapes my brother had put together. There might be Garrett Brooks in there, there might be coach. There would be some dreadful uh some you know, maybe some mixtapes from long wave radio, Atlantic 252, where you press play and record. It says um you know, long before uh phones and everything, but I used to like I would just be out building endurance, building endurance, all those things when I'm 15, 16. There's no like there's no site of professionalism in the making you do it, and that's you know, who you are is what you do when nobody's looking. Okay, so when we when I played professional rugby, I struggled outside the white lines. So I struggled in the environment, was a little bit probably uh immature, so all the social dynamics is very, very alpha, uh and that can be quite uh can be quite a hard place to be because I was quite immature as a young person. So I was at 18, I was playing with you know 28-year-olds and 35 year olds, so I was straight in at the deep end, but was probably a little bit behind on that. But once you got into the white lines, I just so comfortable and almost wanted more pressure. So the bigger the moment, the more I wanted to be uh involved in that. And I think there's a this weird thing in professional sport, it's or in any sort of elite sport, it's about the psychological safety within sport where you feel you can make mistakes. The oddly enough, you make less mistakes, yeah. And it's the times when you feel under pressure about making a mistake, you're likely to make the most mistakes. So I would you know at various times had that really good balance on that, and um you know, over a period of 18-19 years, I probably got that balance right more than than wrong. So when it was on a pitch, you want the ball and you want to make moments that change the the game in in the right way. So yeah, it's like going out like my first start in the Six Nations. I remember walking out, and Malcolm Kelly had his arm around me. He said, We've been walking out in the Stade de France, and he said, Listen, it's it's like a a wall of sound hits you from behind, so we walk out and sound comes in, and I was just like I was just like giddy. Yeah, but then I've also seen people who just it's it's too much. Too much, yeah. And how do you regain focus? And they well, they don't, yeah, they never do, and you can already see they're out of the depth, and that's not going to be an area that they that they that it's not going to be they'll never deliver on their potential at that level because the mental blocker is there's a mental block in there. Okay. So I've done kicking sessions with some of the best kickers in the world on the uh lucky to tour with the with the Lions. So when we when there's no pressure on and we did a kicking drill after training, I won that kicking drill. Oh right. No problem. Yeah, it was fun. It was it was great, it was just uh everything was just pinging off the foot, was like great in a game. Oh okay. No, I just don't have that aspect to my game, and there's a huge and there's a so what's the difference between being able to do there? It's up here. It's the top two inches. The difference between execute a simple skill on a pitch. Now, thankfully I had three or four other skills I was able to fall back on, and nobody was nobody was too worried uh that I couldn't kick a ball. But ultimately, what's the difference? It's that mental piece, the top two inches, and that's invariably what creates ceilings for players.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

And that's the piece that I think really attracts people to sport and to art because you're seeing somebody actually achieving something that very few people can actually do. You might think about it, you might say, geez, I'd love to do that, but it's way beyond my capability. And you see people like Gordon and other players doing it, and you identify with that as there's something there's something here which is approaching the pinnacle of capability, and we want to be associated with that. We want to see that because it's not very often we see it, we don't see it in our everyday activity, and you see it in sport and you see it on the stage, you know. Very conscious of people who perform in the festival, really worried uh you know, before a performance, am I actually going to hit it right tonight? Am I going to have um the ability to reach the notes? Is it all going to come together? Am I going to send people home feeling that they've been enhanced? Yes. Um and how that weighs heavily on them. That's the piece that we're talking about. That you you you get that performance that is inspiring for others. Yeah. And you know it's rare, and you know we're privileged to see this. And that's why we go after it. I remember a discussion, it was part of a discussion once with uh Gary Hines and a few others, and we were talking about this, you know, the um impact of arts and and sport on a community, and somebody said that you know, sport is the heart of a community, and art is the soul of a community. I thought, hmm, might sound a bit fanciful, but when you actually boil it down, there there's something in there. But I think that's pretty true of Wexford.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

Yeah. No, it is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 37:29

You know, both both elements are here very strong.

SPEAKER_04 37:32

And it's even beyond that, it's even like walking groups and running clubs and hiking groups, there's so many groups that are accessible to create that network, be it that it's for kind of outside of work for pleasure, or that it's for actual business conversations with your network.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

That's the bit I think is it's funny, like you as I said, I started by saying that as serendipity um plays a role and um it definitely has in in in my life. But you talked about barriers to projects, you know, whether it was in business or getting the opera festival up and how it the challenge was around navigating them. What I find at the moment is there's probably less barriers now than there ever has been, and I think more support and more whether it is through you know the Leo or through Enterprise Ireland, through the chamber, through the county council, through business people willing to give their time back into the community, there seems to be less barriers here than ever before.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

And that's a really like you know, I think that's a really positive thing to be able to say about a county and people willing to put themselves out there to try and you know, try and back people within the county. And you have that dysporia that's coming back as well and looking to looking to be involved in the in the county.

SPEAKER_04 38:55

So, yeah, well that's a big part of this campaign that we're running in the chamber is that we want people to come, we want like Asperg to come back to Wexford and share their experiences. We want people to choose Wexford who move here from somewhere else or choose to set up their set up their business here. And Wexford has more to offer, doesn't it? It has the quality of life. 260 kilometres of um coastline, we attract 1.1 million domestic tourists into the county every year, which is a lot more than other counties. Um so we have a lot going for us already. It's just trying to showcase that to maybe the business community and to those who are choosing their next location.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

But I think I'm a case in point here is that I came down here because of a career move.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

Uh and I wondered how it was going to work out before I got here. And I had no sense that it was going to be as enriching as it was. Lovely. Uh I had no sense that uh the community was going to be open, as as open and as welcoming. I had no idea I was going to get exposed to the world of opera um and all of what that uh exposed me to, you know, nationally and internationally. Um but I think if you're looking at making a career in Wexford and moving your family here, I think there is a very persuasive argument here that Wexford will offer you a level of fulfilment that you'll struggle to find in other locations.

SPEAKER_04 40:18

Yeah. And it's kept you here, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:20

It has kept me here, and while I spent twenty years working out of PWC in Dublin and and abroad, we had decided we were living in Wexford no matter what, and we worked uh the work requirements around that, but we were not giving up living in Wexford.

SPEAKER_04 40:39

Yeah, it's pretty special. We often joke about um having notions and we mock each other for having notions, but I think we kind of need to have some notions. Like we some people would say you've had notions to think to uh kind of initially believe you're going to get that level in s of sport, Gordon, and Paul, you with the 32 million investment in um um that you attracted for National Opera House.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

That's notion, right? Notions is is a nice term, but yeah, I used the term I think outrageous ambition when we were talking about what we were doing. That's a notion. It is. You know, but outrageous ambitions are what drive change. Uh and if you have the right kind of outrageous ambitions that people can identify with and are willing to actually put their energy and their in your emotional investment into it, you start to achieve things that you know would not be achieved otherwise.

SPEAKER_04 41:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Um and you know, when when I go back to that time when when we were confronted with the fact that we needed to to build a new opera house, there were three uh capital projects for the arts in Ireland under discussion at the time. One was the new Abbey Theatre, uh one was the redevelopment of the National Concert Hall, and way, way down the line was the pot possibly a a new home for Wexford Festival Opera. Well, here we are nearly 20 years on, and we're the only one that's there. You know, the the Abbey hasn't changed, the National Concert Hall redevelopment is only starting now. Um and I think there's a reason for that, is that we looked at what you had to do to be in a position to mobilize that type of project when the opportunity came around. So Gordon's talking about serendipity. You have to control sometimes your own serendipity.

SPEAKER_03 42:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

So that's why we went and bought these you know adjacent nine properties to the old Theatre Royal to give us the footprint. You know, we had gone and got the designs for a new opera house done. We had actually planning permissions in place, um, so that when the funding came around in terms of the the Celtic Tiger period, we were the only project ready to go. And that and and and we went with you know with all of the sort of stewardship around that. But another small point um which I think is relevant, the building of the National Opera House was a very complex build project in the middle of the town. For that project we had to apply or apply for four different uh planning permissions. And we were going to undertake a project was going to be very intrusive for a lot of people. Not one single objection to those planning permission applications happened. And I remember the OPW guys thinking this is extraordinary. We've never seen anything like this. This this is hugely intrusive, this project we're going to do because of the restrictions of access that were there. Uh and they expected and were factoring in delays and delays and delays, and we were saying, Well, we can't have a delay because the festival has to happen at a particular point in time. And we didn't have a single objection to any of those planning applications. And I think it's a huge statement about. About the support for the project, the identification with the building by the community. It's the community's building.

SPEAKER_04 44:08

You've dabbled in entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

I have, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:14

Tough gig?

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Yeah. Um like I did a startup with my sister and I've had a bar and a restaurant and I have a business with my wife. We've an SME, we've a Reformer Pilate studio in Dublin. Do you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:27

I've tried it. It's it's good, isn't it? Reformer Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Yeah, so we've been in business for about 13 years. Um so it's 13 years. Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

I taught reformers only around around two, three years.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

No, we've been we've been there, we're one of the one of the longest in it. Um so it's a proper little SME business. You know, we've about six people working with us, and you know, we're in a community, we're in an area in Dublin where you know all the businesses kind of pull together.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

The start 13 years is pretty well established.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Yeah, I keep trying to I keep trying to remind uh Ifa of how like you know most people would be shouting this from the rooftops. Yeah, um but she's uh she's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 45:03

She runs a did she teach or does run the business?

SPEAKER_01 45:05

She runs the business, she runs it, she runs a really uh really tight ship, so it's it's great. And then I did a bar and restaurant with my friends from school, and then I we kind of sold that off just before the pandemic, which was good luck, good timing, yeah. Um and then myself and my sister did a tech startup, digital health startup, and that is you know the statistics don't lie in that, and unfortunately, we were a statistic, we were the eight or nine that fail. Um, so yeah, that was uh really, really brilliant to work in, as in there's such a uh such a sense of value you creation because everything you're doing on a daily basis, you know exactly where it's going. It's building this platform for it was for speech therapy and the HSE and the NHS. We knew exactly where everything was going on a daily basis. The challenge is when the NHS and HSE are only clients, it's all look or no dinner. Um, so really stressful trying to raise money and look after other people's livelihoods and things like that. So it was the closest I've had to professional sport where you know it was Sean and I in a small team, and we were you know purely aligned to the success of this business, and that's what you have to have in elite sport where everybody has to be pulling in the same direction when they're not, they either need to get off or the team is the team is goosed. But there's the financial reality to starting a business, and I suppose I've got the scars, uh, emotional and physical scars from uh from from doing it, and yeah, it was great, brilliant experience, but as a result, like it's one of those ones that the way I kind of uh align I try to uh reconcile it in my head. I swung for the ropes with it. Okay, we had went for four or five years. It is what's needed, but that timing is everything. But now I work in insurance with locked in. It's a little bit entrepreneurial because I'll do everything from uh anything from renewable energy to an energy contractor to a building contractor to an accountant to a restaurant or thing. So it's lots of uh different stuff to keep us uh keep me keep me interested. Um, but you kind of go in now with a little bit of appreciation for the simplicity of working for somebody else.

SPEAKER_04 47:28

I know I I love leading businesses for other people. Well, in the chamber you're kind of doing it for your for your community, yeah. But um yeah, entrepreneurship is it's a tough gig, isn't it? You worked with um entrepreneurs in PWC as well, Paul.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

I I did, yeah, and I had various roles in PwC, but for a long time I was responsible for the the family business practice. Right which you know deals with all of the sort of gamut of family businesses from start-ups right through to sort of four and five generations on and the difficulty that is inherent in those kind of businesses um where you have a d a dynamic outside of the corporate world, you have the family dynamic and the alignment of family governance and you know good family businesses also have to be good business families. And if you don't address both of those needs, you're actually putting yourself at risk, and the importance of actually helping families to address those those needs um was very satisfying, very rewarding, but it's a challenge for everyone.

SPEAKER_04 48:31

Well it's complicated because there's accession planning and all that as well, and then there is.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

You know, you you bring your project here, you get a support in relation to tax grant support, various supports, it's very clear. But for the indigenous sector, particularly family businesses, the the social contract is not as well developed at all. And if you look at a the the the country and the economy of a country and the importance of the indigenous sector as well as the FDI sector, it's not as well developed. And there is a need for a much more developed social contract. Family businesses bring commerce to parts of the country that commerce would not naturally go. Right. Um and we talked earlier about the the real sort of business leaders that have come out of this community here and the commerce that they have brought to Wexford. Um but in terms of then when they have to deal with succession and deal with the type of uh tax exposures that are inherent than that, they're at a real disadvantage. And that the playing field is not level here. So the social contract for FDI is much more favourable than it is for Indigenous business. That's a challenge. That's something that does need to be addressed. It does.

SPEAKER_04 49:53

Looking ahead, what does success in County Wexford look like in 10-15 years' time, in your view?

SPEAKER_01 49:58

Well, I think we're probably long enough now away from Martin Story's famous 1996 dancing at the crossroads? Yeah, well we uh we've been the we've been the bridesmaids for now today. We got married. I think that I think we're due another uh due another wedding, aren't we? We're due another wedding. So that would be uh that would definitely be an element of uh element of so that I was actually working in the ferry carry hotel.

SPEAKER_04 50:21

So you weren't dancing at the crossroads.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

I well I was cleaning up after the I was cleaning up after the crossroads. I was a porter in the hotel.

SPEAKER_04 50:28

You were a porter in a ferry car?

SPEAKER_01 50:31

16 and I was given the Liam McCarthy and I was told to hide it because they were bashing it up.

SPEAKER_04 50:36

You have to you were responsible for hiding the Liam McCarthy.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

And cleaning up all the trius. Yeah, so there you go. Like success for Wexford. I think continuing in the same vein, I think that we are. I think, as I said, we're at this kind of meeting point now of where the as I said, the barriers are down. Yeah. And we have very passionate people who have been there through a period where there would have been a lot of barriers in their way, and they've been very successful. So I think what's success for Wexford is just the continuing growth within it, as saying everything that is magn the magnificent magnification of everything that is good within within Wexford. So, you know, what is that? That's the community sport, a few more businesses coming in, companies deciding to relocate to here. Yeah, it all feeds into itself. So you can't have one piece without the other. You can't just have business growth without community growth. And I think the two everything works hand in glove. So success really is staying on our current path and just making sure that we're always growing.

SPEAKER_04 51:39

Yeah, I agree. Paul?

SPEAKER_02 51:41

Yeah, I I look I think the essence of it is what Gordon is talking about there, which is the that nucleus of can do and the psyche that we can do something here which will stand up at any particular level of manage uh measurement, either nationally or internationally, that that is preserved, developed, and more people think like that. I'd like to see the you know in that time frame the the SETU campus fully developed and the impact of what that will bring in terms of capability and enablement. You'd like to think that the offshore winds project potential will have been developed and will start to have been harnessed, which would give us kind of two elements into the firmament that haven't been there up to now. But I think that's taking opportunities that come about, but actually mobilising and executing on them is the can-do piece and that belief that we can make something happen here to a greater extent to perhaps other places, and that we have a community here that we're enhancing and enriching so that the experience of living here is more readily recognised as one which is completely fulfilling and real life-affirming.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

Agree. I um I totally agree with SET Wexter campus and offshore renewable energy. We've had a separate episode on that with David Dempsey and Eamon Sinat because big focus for the county. Um when you think about your own journeys, what does County Wextwood mean to you? Go to you, Gordon? Um home.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Oh we moved a good bit and we moved four times uh while I was quite young. So I never really had a parish. Had a never yeah, no, like it really didn't. Like I loved growing up in ferns, you know, went to school in Montlodi, and then we moved to Niscorthy, went to school in Nascorthy briefly, and then Wexford Town. So Wexford kind of particularly Wexford Town kind of feels a little bit uh a little bit like home. And I I moved a number of times in Dublin, so it's actually kind of got two homes now because it's you know my kids in the house with them, and that really feels like it feels like home. But every time when I come back here, it is you know just uh my childhood. It's everything that was you know good. Getting on the train, going down to Rosselair, causing uh mischief down in Bogartz. Bogart's there you go. That's showing them orphan girl. Orphan girl, yeah. Yeah, working in burger max, everything for a burger after a few night.

SPEAKER_04 54:17

I know it was everywhere. I worked there. You worked there. I worked in burger marks, yeah. You could have served me.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

I wasn't allowed to serve. I cleaned up, I never got to the actual cooking uh thing. So it was McFortune, I think, was the yeah, so I never you never actually let me cook the food. I only cleaned up late at night. So I've had listen, um I've I've I've had everything uh in in around here. So like the Wexford Wanderers as well. Like I spent all my time, all my time down there during the summers just knocking around, you know, training there when I was a little bit older. And I've just always had this draw back to it. And I know I've mentioned that with the other people that come back to live here. I'm probably never going to manage to come that far, but I've always had this connection to Wexford, and whether it has been asked to come down to do a podcast like this or something else, the answer's always been yes. I feel you know, as I would classify myself as a Wexford man living in Dublin.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

So love to hear that. Paul, you came and stayed. What does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Uh it's home as well. It's exactly what Gordon said. This is home from Waterford, but Wexford is now home. And you know, I spent 20 years of my career based out of Wexford, but still maintaining this as home. So when I retired from PwC, which was almost eight years ago, and I had been based in Dublin and you know, with lots of responsibilities for overseas activity, so I wasn't around much. So now that I'm retired, I just want to spend more time here. Um because being in this environment is what gives me the most satisfaction. I mentioned earlier my my three sons were all adults and all went away, they're all back. I've got three grandchildren that I spend time with. So being here and being about being part of Wexford is very important to me.

SPEAKER_04 56:06

Yeah, I can get that from you.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

And that's what I'm I'm looking forward to over the next phase. That's more of this, please.

SPEAKER_04 56:12

The next generations and the next generations. I'm going to finish up with three questions. The first one is the person, which one person, colleague, leader inspires you the most?

SPEAKER_02 56:24

I've been fortunate, I think, Paula, in terms of my career, I've got to work with some really great leaders and business leaders. Um but I think if you know uh given you know my background I I I I end up looking at what the the founders of the festival did back in the fifties. I keep going back to you know, the the notion, the notion that they had, right? Um and you know, people from the medical profession, and James Leduir was a postman, Eugene owned a hotel, and they came together and did something which was extraordinary. Um and I think the the capacity for people to come together from different walks of life and be bound up with uh an ambition and then setting about delivering it against all the odds is a huge lesson and uh you know I've seen many, many successful businesses, you know, operating against the odds. But I always come back to that one that was something really the group of those people who came together not necessarily from a similar profession, but bound up with the same ambition to do something unique for the place where they lived. And the energy to act on it. And and the energy and the the guile that was required at a time in nineteen fifties, Ireland in a coastal town, you know, not that long after the war. There was no reason to suspect that this could ever succeed.

SPEAKER_04 58:05

Yeah, it's incredible when you say it.

SPEAKER_02 58:07

And it did.

SPEAKER_04 58:08

Gordon Carson for you?

SPEAKER_01 58:09

I'll probably uh go a little bit closer to home and just my my parents gave me probably the best sounding board I had. So I obviously I I you know you grow up as a teenager and you know your parents aren't necessarily they're not they're not your friends, they're you know, they're keeping you alive, which as I'm figuring out with a boy is harder than it. Uh I I kind of smile about the uh stress I may have called caused poor old Peggy uh down through the down through the years. But you got to the point, so I um got as as I said, I got thrown into a professional game at a very young age, and I wasn't able for that. And my parents were amazing.

SPEAKER_04 58:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 58:52

So they did the right things at the right times, they talked when they needed to, they were never overbearing, they're never overarching, they never tried to force any narrative on me, they never forced force any, you know, um, oh, we want you to be the best or thing. They were just always there in the background. And my dad, my mum and dad, in particular, when I was really struggling uh trying to and I nearly lost my contract because I wasn't was kind of meandering as a as a as an athlete, and coach gave me a rocket up the arse and said, like, listen, we're getting rid of your contract, we're not going to give you a little thing. It's one of those things you wish you knew then what you know now. It was very much a motivational tool.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

And Dad said to me after that, and he was there, Do you think you might do you think there might be a reason why they're threatening to cancel your contract? I hated that answer because what you want from your parents is come on, you're brilliant. Come on over here now. I give your mom like give me a little, give you a little little a little hug and a little thing. And that that started a chain of events with me, which became one of the most important things that's happened to me as a rugby player, but as a person. So this thing around self-awareness, right? I had no concept of what I'm doing. So this got forced on me quite young because I couldn't shake what dad had said. I was like, going, what does he mean? What does he mean? What does he mean? So I went and asked a couple of people that I really trusted and respected. I said, What do you how do you think I'm going? How do you think I'm I'm trucking here as a thing? And the feedback was brutal. I thought I was like five or six out of the ten. They were effectively all going, You're zero or zero. Really? It was it was the harshest. But really, no, no, it really wasn't. Okay. Because you're actually now going, what I've done now is, or what if what's happened is I understand how people see me. And that is one of the most powerful things you can have as a person. So you start going, okay, well, the only way I can change how people see me is I can change how I act and how I do things. And that became really, really important for me. So that's was probably one of the most that's parenting at its best.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

You've written about that in one of your articles, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:00

It's so important to look inward, isn't it? Yeah. So well hold yourself accountable, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

It's yeah, you absolutely do. And the question is, are you open to hearing the answers? Um, and that was kind of forced on me in that dynamic. But what I've used is so rather than say you asked about say like a people who are really important in your life, there's going to be very different people at various different points in your life. So now I work in insurance, I will speak to somebody about that, but I will ask very pointed questions about how am I doing the things, how can I do what I'm doing better. So if I'm writing an article, we're writing books, Paul Howard is a great lens to use. There's there are great lenses or mirrors around the place if you can use them in the right way. So rather than an individual being the person who is like going, that's the person I go to for everything. It's usually different people that I go to. My wife is an incredible mirror for me because I can ask her anything and she will be really forthright with it because she knows that's what I'm she's not looking for me. She's not she's not looking for uh sugar coated. So I think that's for me, I think that is that's something I think is really good because we're all busy people, and sometimes you can get caught being busy. And are you doing and are you doing the right things or are you saying yes to too many things, or you you know, how are you doing that? So if you don't actually sense check with people who s who actually see from the outside that kind of see you for you know exactly what you're doing, and you find a way to sense check that. So probably my parents. Oh, it's a great thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:27

As you go back to it's it's you're you're blessed obviously to have such a strong community around you and family around you. Yeah, I think. It's so important. Um right, the last one. Do you have a drink? Where do you like a nice pint in Wexford?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:42

I live close to Whitford.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:44

Nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:45

And it's very uh easily accessible from my house. I like to stroll up there. No cars or anything involved, and it's it's a wonderful facility. It is and they really run a great show up there and it's lovely to go up there, take a take a bit of time out and come back again.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:04

And a meal as well, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

Oh yeah, regularly. Yeah. It's a great family business.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:08

The Witties are great.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:09

It's another family business that's uh pretty exemplary in the way they've built it up and their plans for the future are uh still, you know, very ambitious again, and you've got to admire it.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:21

Yeah, no, they're around a long time and it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

But they execute it so well, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:26

Do you drink? Do you have time for drinking, Gordon?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:28

Yeah, I I have three very small kids. So um anytime we do come down to Wexford, it's not necessarily for uh pint, but we do make a point of driving out to the lobster butt with the kids, and then the other two places, Caroo.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:41

Caro is lovely, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:43

So that isn't it, Gordon.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:45

The food brilliant, yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

Um, and then with uh our kids' personal favourite is uh Frank's place.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:52

Oh Frank's Frank's do good tapas in the evening too. Yeah, yeah, lovely one.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

Very we go. So less less on the on on the pint, I'm sure that'll come back around, but it's more with food with a with a with an Pinot or just good food. Exactly. Um but yeah, so we we because we have to our our kids have turned into like connoisseurs and they never want to eat in the same place twice.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:14

So they have notions, Gordon. They absolutely do.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

You can see there's wex for blood in the mouth.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:21

Gordon Darcy, Paul Hennessy, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for giving your time to County Wexford.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:26

It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Business Connections. For more information on County Wexford Chamber and how it is working to shape Wexford's future as a great place to work, live, and do business. Visit County Wexford Chamber.ie. The recording of this podcast is supported by Leader.