A long winding road from Longford to boutique hotels

Big Developers:Starting out at 15 as a carpenter, Séamus Ross can now travel the world picking up ideas for boutique hotels. Hard work and ruthlessness fuelled his success, writes Kathy Sheridan.

If there is a template for the kind of man who emerged from the bogs and drumlins of rural Ireland and with minimal education, a gambler's instinct, hard labour and ruthlessness, rose to the top, it is Seamus Ross.

Nowadays the 55-year-old, devoted family man lives with Moira, his wife of 30 years, in a glorious house once owned by the Shackletons, on 60 prime acres beside Luttrellstown demesne in west Dublin. His mode of transport is helicopter and Hawker private jet, believed to be undergoing an upgrade to transatlantic capability.

Now that his 28-year-old son, Seamus junior, is driving Menolly, Ross senior can enjoy meandering across Europe and the world, expanding his empire to Eastern Europe and New York, picking up ideas for his boutique hotels, while indulging his passion for all things traditionally Irish.

His big 50th birthday and 25th wedding anniversary bash, held in a marquee at his home, included the renewal of his marriage vows before the same priest who married him and Moira, with entertainment provided by a ceilidh band and a showband. One friend says, "He is home for his tea every day".

He invites his friends in for set dancing lessons (complete with teacher) in his ballroom, sponsors the Meath football team, and has adopted for his horse racing colours, the maroon and saffron of Fr Manning Gaels, the GAA club of his native parish, Drumlish in north Longford. His county pride goes deep.

His circle of friends, successful entrepreneurs like himself, who include Jimmy Flynn, John Mahon and Oliver Bardon, have been dubbed the "Longford Mafia".

His political friends include the Lenihan brothers - he can pick up the phone to Brian, his local TD, and Conor - and his political colours are overt.

Asked for his predictions for 2007, they included "Fianna Fáil returning to government, hopefully with Progressive Democrats".

With a company building up to 1,000 houses a year, aiming for high density sales and smaller margins, he is said to rely heavily on Brendan Byrne of Sherry FitzGerald New Homes for advice.

He is widely regarded as a "gentleman", honest, straight-talking, no-nonsense. According to a politician in the area affected by the pyrite problem in north Dublin, "he is quick to put his hands up when there are problems".

"He can have a slight inferiority complex about his lack of education," says an acquaintance, "but watch him with lawyers and he can tear their arguments apart, see ways around things that they never would."

Those singed in business deals however, are less enamoured, saying he "lacks depth" "a cute hoor . . . the kind who'd get the better end of a 50-50 deal".

The ruthless streak common to all such men emerges in predictable ways.

"He takes defeat badly and can simmer for days. Personally, he's unbelievably generous, but in business, he'd fight over tuppence", says one industry source.

"He's tough, tough, tough . . . The cutbacks in the past 12 months have seen men being laid off who would have been with Menolly for a long time. The attitude would be 'if men have to go, they have to go', even some who've been here for years", says another. But they all concede that Seamus Ross at least, has walked the walk.

Born in Corrick, Drumlish in north Longford, amid bog and drumlin country, he was one of four children of Jimmy Ross and Mary Ann Mulleady and was never a stranger to hard work. With a tiny house and about 15 acres, times were hard and the contribution of the family's hog to their income was significant. Neighbours from miles around walked their pigs to the hog for insemination at half a crown a time.

After national school and a few years at the vocational school in Ballinamuck, young Séamus was 15 when he went to serve his time as a carpenter at Frankie Mulleady's construction business.

After about 18 months, he migrated to Dublin with his fellow north Longfordman, Mick Whelan (also a highly successful developer, trading as Maple Homes), where they set to work as roofers. It was common to share bedsits, four and five men to a room. A bath was rare and wonderful.

Those who knew them back then recall "nothing particularly outstanding" about them. One source remembers: "Séamus was not remarkable for his intelligence but he was a bigger gambler and would have been a huge worker. He'd do hard, physical work around the clock."

A combination of luck and sweat left the two well poised to take advantage of the rising tide of the 1970s. They set up Drumlish homes, built on good sites in Castleknock and Newlands Cross and took big risks. "Make no mistake, those guys took serious chances," says an old acquaintance. "Ross's own home would have been on the line in the early days."

When the slump came, the banks backed off as they do, refusing to take what appeared to be worthless landbanks in lieu of loans. Whelan went back to carpentry in London for a time while Séamus, says a friend, experienced "rough" times in Ireland. In the end, the joke was on the bankers.

By the mid-1980s, the land-banks disdained by the banks were evolving into gold-dust. Ross had married Whelan's sister, Moira, and he was dropping into Sunday Mass in Drumlish in a shiny Mercedes and honing his ambition on small estates of 20 to 30 houses at a time, looking hungrily at the scope of the big boys such as Abbey, Dwyer Nolan and Gallagher.

At one point Ross and Whelan set up Seán Dunne, (then a quantity surveyor, now the "Baron of Ballsbridge"), in business, in a company called DCD. "Even then," says one who knew them, "Dunne was flamboyant, would never get his shoes dirty - not like Ross or Whelan."

Ross and Whelan have since parted ways - "partings can come in old friendships when the next generation comes along", says a friend. However, Whelan was at his big birthday/anniversary bash. For Longford men, roots go deep.