When you think of a typical successful Dublin businessman, does your first thought go to a former carpenter and son of a miner and trader from Doolin, County Clare? Me neither. Eugene Garrihy was born in Doolin in 1959 and was the third youngest child of eleven living in a two-bedroom house. Eugene eventually moved to Dublin and started two businesses, Castleknock Construction and Dublin Bay Cruises.  I sat down with him and asked him to bring me through the story of how he got to reach the business heights that he has.  

Eugene did his Junior and Leaving Certicate exams in Ennistymon Vocational School and after that moved straight into working as a carpenter in Lisdoonvarna. After that he moved into salmon fishing before taking another carpentry job when he met a project manager, Peter O’Hare, who was starting work on the East Link Bridge in the years of 1979 and 1980. Eugene had been working on a tugboat for the East Link Bridge project for a few weeks when the tug master fell ill. Garrihy was asked if he could drive the boat and he did for the next two years while he worked on the East Link Bridge. After a few more jobs Eugene eventually met his now wife Clare in Lisdoonvarna and they moved to Dublin where he would eventually set up his own construction company, Castleknock Construction in 1985 where he would be Managing Director up until December 2011. However, not content with being in just one business, in 1999 Eugene got into the ferry business for the first and not the last time, when he and his brother’s PJ and Joe set up the Doolin2Aran Ferries, which the brothers ran for 25 years.  

Despite Castleknock Construction being, by all accounts, a successful business, Eugene had to close the company in 2012. After the closure of his first business, Eugene moved his attention down to Doolin for two years to help grow the Doolin2Aran ferry company with his brothers. While he was there he and other ferry operators in the area lobbied for the building of a new Doolin pier which officially opened in 2015 with an estimated cost of €6 million. While down in Doolin during this time, Eugene in an effort to, as he says, “get my own independence back,” went to Westport in County Mayo and purchased the ship that is now called the St Bridget which Eugene named after his mother. Garrihy used this ship to set up his new Dublin-based business, Dublin Bay Cruises.  

Eugene has also been involved with his political party of choice Fianna Fáil, which was also his father’s party . Although he’s been involved with the party, he has never considered politics as a career he would like to pursue. “I don’t think I’d have the stomach for the abuse,” he said.  Eugene has also been involved in charity work throughout his time, working with disability institutions. He raised €110,000 for the Irish Cancer Society and ran five marathons for Children’s Health Ireland in Crumlin. In my conversation with Eugene, he said that he has had a very interesting life, but he believes that all the things he has done have been down to a certain amount of luck. At one point in our interview Eugene said, “No matter how hard you work, no matter how good you are at it or how skilled you are at it, you need a bit of luck,” and he goes on to say that he has seen some of the finest people just be unlucky and not succeed, but if success is based on equal parts hard work and luck then he must be a very lucky man indeed.  

The Doolin2Aran ferries were owned and operated by the Garrihy brothers for the better part of three decades. During this time the company was in constant competition with The Doolin Ferry Company ,which was owned by the O’Briens. The two families had a strong competitive rivalry for years on the Doolin pier: “We were shadow boxing for years,” as Eugene put it. It would have come as a surprise to many when the Garrihys sold their company to the O’Briens in 2022. When asked about the reason for the sale Eugene simply said the O’Briens were “younger” while the Garrihy brothers got older and Eugene had his own commitments in Dublin with Dublin Bay Cruises, the decision to sell was reached. After the sale Eugene’s brother PJ retired to spend more time with his family and Joe works with his son in a garage in Clare.  

Dublin Bay Cruises is Eugene’s current focus. In the interview he describes how he came up with the idea. “It seemed to me like there were three beautiful harbours in Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Howth and Dublin Port, and it seemed like no one was connecting them.” Last year the flagship vessel of Dublin Bay Cruises, The St Bridget was relaunched with entirely new engines built to run on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) which drastically decreases emissions compared to regular fuel. However, HVO is much more expensive compared to regular fuel. I asked why he felt so strongly about the preservation of the environment, and he told me a story of what he calls his “dawning” moment. Eugene was out fishing for salmon one day when four porpoises got caught in the net and drowned. This was a shocking moment for Eugene as he describes seeing those “four beautiful mammals dead”. Telling this story now you can still see how this experience continues to affect him. This “dawning” moment has followed Eugene throughout his life influencing the decisions he made and the love for nature he has cultivated.  

Eugene Garrihy has been many people: carpenter, tug master, businessman and even writer as he wrote a piece for the Clare Champion about his experience meeting Brendan Mac Lua co-founder and longtime editor of the Irish Post. It appears Eugene may not be done with writing as he shared with me that he’s currently writing his memoirs. I think the last line of Eugene’s article about Brendan Mac Lua applies just as much to Eugene as it does to Brendan and so I will finish with it here: “A proud Clareman from North Clare whose voice travelled far beyond the boggy hills and limestone fields that helped shape him.”