Born: 28 January 1929, St Mary’s, Cowper Road, Rathmines, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 08 October 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 02 June 2019, Blackrock, Dublin City, County Dublin
Left Society of Jesus: 20 February 1948
Parents were John and Mary (Meagher). Father was an Accountant and deceased at the time of entry. Mother was a Director of McBirney’s Department Store, Aston Quay, Dublin.
2 Brothers and 2 Sisters.
Educated at Belvedere College SJ, Dublin.
Baptised at Church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar Road, Dublin, 01/02/1929
Confirmed at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Marlkborough Street, Dublin,, by Dr Wall of Dublin, 31/01/1940
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/john-donnelly-obituary-one-of-ireland-s-foremost-insolvency-experts-1.3925143#:~:text=Donnelly%2C%20one%20of%20Ireland's%20foremost,in%20a%20practice%20co%2Dfounded
Heroism, eclectic diversity of interests, deep spirituality and chartered accountancy are not usually found in each other’s company, but in the one-of-a-kind life of John Donnelly, who has died aged 90, they certainly were.
Donnelly, one of Ireland's foremost insolvency experts and the leading receiver of troubled companies from the late 1960s onwards, was, successively, a teenage soldier in the British army's D-Day landings on Sword beach on the Normandy coast, a Jesuit seminarian for two years, an articled clerk in a practice co-founded by his own father, the principal of that practice from his qualification in 1954 as a fellow (as it then was) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and then, finally, one of the founding partners of what has become, after many mergers, the Irish operation of the major firm Deloitte.
Business was in Donnelly’s blood. His father, Jack, was a chartered accountant with the famous Dublin firm Craig Gardner. He had left with John Gardner, a son of one of the founders of the practice, to form Gardner Donnelly, but died young when John was still a child, leaving his mother, May (nee Mehigan), to bring him and his five siblings up on her own. Fortunately, however, she was also in business, and prominently, as chairwoman of the legendary department store McBirney’s. The family continued to live in comfortable circumstances in Temple Gardens, Rathmines.
Educated at Belvedere College, he demonstrated early an independent streak which was also to last him to the end, by running away in his 16th year to join the British army in 1944. He found himself within a few months, having lied about his age, in France. He was shot in the neck by a sniper, recovered and returned to his unit.
Father’s practice Donnelly lost many friends as a young soldier, and this affected him very deeply. It was perhaps this experience that led him to spend two years in training for ordination as a Jesuit on his return to Dublin, and, later, perhaps influenced also a short-lived dalliance as a medical student. In time, he settled down in his late father’s practice, which he bought out two years before qualifying himself.
He developed a speciality as an insolvency practitioner widely regarded in the business world as second to none. As his former colleague in Deloitte, retired partner David Deasy, put it to The Irish Times this week: "During the late 1960s, and from then until [Donnelly's retirement in] the 1990s, he was the go-to person for banks for particularly challenging and difficult receiverships."
Among the most prominent of these were Ranks Ireland; Cork brewers James J Murphy's; Van Hool McArdle, motor body builders in Dundalk; Janelle, a large textile group in Finglas, Dublin, in the early 1980s; Dr Austin Darragh's Institute of Clinical Pharmacology in the late 1980s and early 1990s; and UMP Meats of Ballyhaunis in the same period.
Donnelly made a point of attempting to rescue jobs, if he could, from unpromising situations, and it gave him particular pleasure, for example, to be able to sell on Murphy’s to Heineken, a deal that has preserved jobs in Cork for the past generation. UMP Meats was eventually bought by Glanbia, and today Dawn Meats still operates the plant.
The work was sometimes dangerous. In the case of Ranks Ireland, a number of the firm’s workers staged a sit-in at the plant, and subversive elements, quite separately from the workers and without their consent, took advantage of this as a publicity stunt to threaten Donnelly and his family, resulting in an armed Garda presence having to be provided at the family home for years subsequently. His former colleague, Billy O’Riordan, told The Irish Times that when Donnelly had to make people redundant, “he always treated them with the utmost respect and consideration”.
To work for, Donnelly was a demanding taskmaster. David Carson, another colleague at Deloitte and still a partner with the practice, recalled this week that "John was a tough individual to work for, but fair. He stood up for you." But first you had to prove that you knew your stuff. "He very much challenged you. He'd test you and you very much had to pass that test." For scheduled meetings, colleagues needed to be prepared thoroughly. Carson remarking that "you needed to be very, very well prepared, you needed to know what the objective was; he didn't appreciate you not being well-briefed."
Eugene McCague, a solicitor formerly of Arthur Cox and Partners, who worked on many projects with Donnelly, said this week this directness extended to Donnelly’s dealings with lawyers. “He had a hatred of imprecise language. He was a stickler for precision . . . I learned a lot from him.”
Toughness in negotiations was another characteristic McCague recalled also when Donnelly handled the closing down of Dublin Port’s stevedoring subsidiary Dublin Cargo Handlers in 1992, “there were long, tough negotiations with the trade unions, but he did a deal with generous redundancy payments.”
Outside business, Donnelly had an extensive record as a volunteer with a range of charitable and not-for-profit causes, especially at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin (where he chaired a finance committee, which raised £1.5 million) and Co-Operation North (now Co-Operation Ireland), the boards of both of which he chaired. He also served for 20 years as honorary consul of Finland in Ireland.
John Donnelly is survived by his widow, Aoibheann (nee MacEllin), his daughters Grace, Caoimhe and Deirdre, son JP, and also by sisters, Ethel and Philomena, and his brother, Gerard. He was predeceased by brothers Michael and Daniel
https://rip.ie/death-notice/john-donnelly-dublin-blackrock-374303
The death has occurred of
John DONNELLY
Blackrock, Dublin
(1929 – 2019), former Senior Partner of Deloitte in Dublin, peacefully on the morning of June 2nd 2019; beloved husband of Aoibheann (nee MacEllin) for 57 years and loving father to Grace, Caoimhe, Deirdre and JP. Sadly missed by his sons-in-law Fintan O’Gorman, Andrew Lowe and Aillil O’Reilly, his brother Gerard and brother-in-law Peter Dunn. Predeceased by his sisters Ethel and Phil, and brothers Daniel and Michael. Cherished by his fourteen grandchildren Jack, Katie and Harry Donnelly; Christopher, Eleanor, and Louisa O’Gorman; Jonathan, Alec, Cormac and Jake Lowe; Ailbhe, Honor, Lauren and James O’Reilly.
Date Published:
Tuesday 4th June 2019
Date of Death:
Sunday 2nd June 2019
https://notices.irishtimes.com/death/donnelly-john/55337869
DONNELLY, John: Death
DONNELLY, John (Blackrock, Dublin, 1929 – 2019), former Senior Partner of Deloitte in Dublin, peacefully on the morning of June 2, 2019; beloved husband of Aoibheann (nee MacEllin) for 57 years and loving father to Grace, Caoimhe, Deirdre and JP. Sadly missed by his sons-in-law Fintan O’Gorman, Andrew Lowe and Aillil O’Reilly, his brother Gerard and brother-in-law Peter Dunn. Pre-deceased by his sisters Ethel and Phil, and brothers Daniel and Michael. Cherished by his fourteen grandchildren Jack, Katie and Harry Donnelly; Christopher, Eleanor, and Louisa O’Gorman; Jonathan, Alec, Cormac and Jake Lowe; Ailbhe, Honor, Lauren and James O’Reilly. Reposing at home tomorrow (Thursday) from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. Funeral Mass on Friday (June 7) at 10.00 am in Church of the Assumption, Booterstown Avenue, followed by burial in Shanganagh Cemetery. Family flowers only please.
