Obituaries

Tom Moran obituary: Hotelier and the first person to pay more than €1m for a pub in Ireland

The Limerick businessman bought the Red Cow Inn and branched into hotels, before selling most of them in the crash

Tom Moran arrived at the Red Cow Inn at lunchtime and noted the packed car park and busy bar serving food

Sat Apr 1 2023 - 00:00

Born September 23rd, 1950

Died March 12th, 2023

Tom Moran, who has died aged 72, was synonymous with the Red Cow Inn on the outskirts of Dublin but in a career that spanned more than 50 years he built and lost a hotel empire.

Moran grew up on a family farm in Toureen Donnell near Athea in west Limerick.

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His father, Thomas, died when Tom was six years old, leaving his mother, Cathy, to run the 50-acre farm and care for seven children, the youngest of whom was just 17 days old.

Opportunities for school leavers were scarce, and as soon as his three older brothers were old enough, they left for London. He spent two years at Newcastle West Vocational School before opting to become an apprentice coffin-maker in Listowel. But he didn’t linger in this job, following his brothers to London when he was 16.

He worked on a building site and in a tyre factory and drove a taxi before settling into bar work in west London. There he met another young emigrant, Sheila Cleary from Enniskillen, who would later become his wife.

The Country Club in Carrigkerry had a dance hall, and acts such as Philomena Begley and Big Tom drew large crowds to the village

He secured his first pub from a brewery aged 19 after pretending he was 23, and believed he was the youngest ever pub licensee in the UK.

Tom and Sheila married in Greenwich in 1971 and went on to run several pubs together, including The Man of Kent in Eltham and the Tulse Hill Tavern.

They bought flats with their savings, renovated them, and rented them out, building up a nest egg to allow them to return to Ireland with their four children.

By the time they arrived in Limerick in 1980, they had bought the Top of the Town pub in his native Athea, and the Country Club in nearby Carrigkerry. The club had a dance hall, and acts such as Philomena Begley and Big Tom drew large crowds to the village. It even had sufficient pulling power to draw Musical Youth to west Limerick in the 1980s. It also attracted singer and comedian Brendan Grace, who would become Tom’s lifelong friend.

As well as running the pubs and a shop, post office and undertaker business, he organised point-to-point meetings and carnivals in a field behind the Country Club.

At this stage, the couple had seven children. They were planning to move into Limerick city in the late 1980s when he bought Bourke’s bar. But the plan changed after a friend asked him to accompany him to the auction of the Red Cow Inn, on Dublin’s Naas Road, in 1988. They arrived at the pub at lunchtime and he noted the packed car park and busy bar serving food.

[ Morans to pick up Red Cow complex from Dalata ]

He later said he had no intention of buying the pub, but when the auction started and the price neared £1 million, he found himself raising his hand. The gavel fell at £1,010,000, (almost €1.3 million), making him the first person to pay more than £1 million for a pub in Ireland.

He had no identification, or even a chequebook with him, so hurried phone calls were made to his bank manager and solicitor to ensure the purchase went through.

The family moved to Dublin and he went on to acquire a stable of pubs, including the Playwright and the Mad Hatter in Blackrock, the Central Bar in Clondalkin and the Pier House in Skerries.

He was a keen supporter of Limerick GAA and the Red Cow Inn became a popular meeting point for supporters on their way to and from matches, particularly when the county’s senior hurling team reached the All-Ireland final in 1994 and 1996. He later began sponsoring Limerick GAA. His timing was good, as the under-21s won the All-Ireland hurling final three years in a row during his sponsorship, while the under-21 footballers won the Munster Championship for the first time.

After more than two decades in the pub trade, he changed direction in 1996 when he opened his first hotel on the grounds of the Red Cow Inn. The first event at the Red Cow Moran Hotel was a wedding of two staff members who still work there today.

While his timing was good with his sponsorship of Limerick GAA, it wasn’t as fortunate when he bought the six Bewley’s Hotels in Dublin and the UK for €570 million in 2007, just before the property bubble burst

He decided to focus on hotels and sold all the pubs, apart from the Red Cow Inn. He bought the Crown pub in Cricklewood in 1998 to develop it into a hotel and later bought the Silver Springs Hotel in Cork and opened the Chiswick Moran Hotel in London.

While his timing was good with his sponsorship of Limerick GAA, it wasn’t as fortunate when he bought the six Bewley’s Hotels in Dublin and the UK for €570 million in 2007, just before the property bubble burst. Interviewed in this newspaper two years later, he said it was a great deal at the time. “Even my accountant and the banks thought it was the deal of the century. But we didn’t see the recession coming,” he said.

Financial restructuring followed and, in 2015, he sold all the hotels to Dalata, with the exception of the Red Cow Moran Hotel, the property closest to his heart.

He received a big setback in 2016 when he had a stroke and fell, in Spain. He sustained a serious head injury and was placed in an induced coma for six weeks before being airlifted back to St James’s Hospital in Dublin.

Despite a bleak prognosis, his family recalled how he was always upbeat, regularly planning what he would do when he was back on his feet again. He spent a year in St James’s Hospital, learning how to swallow, talk and walk again. “I think you have to have a positive outlook in life and believe strongly in what you want to achieve,” he said afterwards. “For me it was always about getting better; there was never a question that I wouldn’t recover.”

[ Checking out at Bewley’s after so long ]

His son Seán, who had been living in London, returned home to nurse him, but tragedy struck the year after his stroke, when Seán died suddenly from a heart condition.

Against the odds, three years after Tom’s stroke, he was well enough to abseil from the roof of the Red Cow Moran Hotel’s new nine-storey extension. Several celebrities joined him to raise funds for St James’s Hospital.

It wasn’t his first charitable act. He was described as a quietly generous man who didn’t mind making an occasional public gesture to help a cause. When he was 61, he organised the Tomathon – a 250km walk from Athea to Dublin, in aid of Pieta House. Between the abseiling and the Tomathon, he raised more than €400,000 for the two causes.

As his children grew up, four of them joined him in the business, and as the pressures of work eased, he delighted in spending as much time with his 20 grandchildren as possible. He continued to recover well from the stroke with a regime of yoga, aqua therapy and speech therapy but contracted a case of melanoma in 2022, which subsequently spread.

Despite his years away from Athea, he retained his west Limerick accent and friends said he never forgot his roots. Former mayor of Limerick, Cllr Liam Galvin, said Tom Moran may have mixed with millionaires, but he was always very down to earth. “He spoke the ordinary language that the ordinary people of Ireland speak. That’s the way he was – he was just a gentleman.”

Tom Moran is survived by his wife, Sheila; children Tommy, Karen, Tracey, Michael, Stephen, Brendan; and sisters Mary, Joan and Helen, and brother Michael. He was predeceased by his son Seán, brothers Seán and Patrick and son-in-law Nardus.

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