Gerard van der Puil:GERARD VAN der Puil, who has died at the age of 87, was managing director of Verolme Cork Dockyard, the State's only major shipbuilding industry and a huge regional employer that boasted a workforce of 1,250 in its heyday.
A Dutch naval architect, he came to Cork in 1962 to join the management team of Cornelius Verolme, a prominent shipbuilder in the Netherlands, who in 1958 had taken over an old shipyard founded 105 years earlier at Rushbrooke near Cobh. It was run as a joint enterprise by Verolme United Shipyards of Rotterdam and the Irish State.
Under van der Puil’s style of management, the Dutch-Irish marriage continued until the mid-1980s. Besides recruiting a skilled workforce, the operation injected £6 million annually in wages into the local economy.
Much of the early success in reviving the tradition of ship and boat-building at Rushbrooke was down to his energy and sense of commitment to the yard which built a succession of large ships including cargo vessels, ferries and maritime patrol ships for the Irish Naval Service across the harbour at Haulbowline, originally the base of the British fleet.
In its early years, the joint operation turned out a string of vessels without the aid of subsidies. But as competition intensified, it became increasingly reliant on shipping orders heavily subsidised by the State. He once admitted that a ship which cost £31 million in Cork could have been built in the Far East for half that sum.
In 1984 van der Puil and the Verolme board made the hard decision to close the shipyard which depended on government contracts and had not won an order on the open market since 1977. However, even though its fortunes had waned, 750 people worked there into the 1980s. By the time its last ship, the LE Eithne, slipped from the dry-dock, the workforce had fallen to 500.
The loss of so many jobs was yet another blow to Cork in an era characterised by the demise of Irish Steel, the Ford car and Dunlop tyre factories and the Sunbeam Wolsey textile plant. With the shipyard facing possible losses of £2 million, he knew the taxpayer would have to find that money on an ongoing basis. Despite heated debates in the Dáil, closure was inevitable.
He was reserved and formal, qualities that created a certain distance between senior Dutch managers and workers on the shopfloor. Yet, in stark contrast with current scenarios, when the decision was finally taken to close the yard, the company was in a position to discharge in full all its responsibilities to creditors and had sufficient funds to pay redundancy to the remaining workers as well as outstanding sums to the State agency, Fóir Teóranta.
Besides acting as Dutch consul in Cork, he held 19 directorships including membership of the board of Irish Steel. In the early 1990s he and his wife Tineke moved to the Isle of Man and had recently returned to the Netherlands, where as a boy he learned to sail with his father.
He was the author of five books, including one about Civil War days in east Cork and in January published his last title, On the Other Side of Ireland. A life-long student, he was still studying philosophy, theology, quantum mechanics and theoretical physics in his 80s. There will be a memorial Service on Sunday, April 1st at 3pm at Christ Church, Rushbrooke, Cobh.
He is survived by his wife Tineke, sons Jan, Henk and Fred, daughter Martine, brother, John, and sister Cornelia.
Gerard van der Puil: born May 14th, 1924; died March 3rd, 2012