February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — The combined wealth of Ireland’s richest 100 people is £12,282 million and a minimum fortune of £32 million is needed to get on the list this year — up £7 million on the 1999 threshold.
Storming the index are the newly wealthy dot.com entrepreneurs, with four of them making it to the top 10 list.
The richest Irish-born person remains Tony O’Reilly, 63, who, with his Greek shipping heiress wife, Chryss Goulandris, has an estimated wealth of £1,489 million, according to the 2000 Sunday Times Rich List.
Topping him as the richest person in the country is Campbell’s Soup heir John Dorrance, 55, the American-born grandson of the condensed soup inventor. An Irish passport purchaser, Dorrance is estimated to have £1.67 billion fortune.
Not far from the top are two brothers from Bray, the McGuires, Cyril, 40, and John, 38, who have amassed an estimated £731 million since their Trintech software company was floated less than a year ago in the U.S. and Germany.
Never miss an issue of The Irish Echo
Subscribe to one of our great value packages.
The shares have soared by about 900 percent in six months and this has put them in third place. Though the McGuires are not Ireland’s richest people, the two unmarried brothers would top a list of highly eligible bachelors.
The newspaper also drew up a list of Britain’s top 1,000 and 28 of Ireland’s top 100 make it on that list also.
Three other high-tech high fliers on Ireland’s top 10 are Dermot Desmond (£512 million), who is 49 has made huge gains from his investments in Esat and Baltimore; Denis O’Brien (£456 million), who is 41 and sold his Esat company to British Telecom in January, and Samir Naji (£359 million), who is 37 and the Cork-born Irish-Egyptian boss of the Horizon Group.
Prominent "old" industry wealth has been pushed down the list. While Margaret Heffernan of Dunnes Stores (£271 million) remains Ireland’s richest woman, she has dropped in the ratings from eighth to 15th.
Almost half the new entries into the 100 this year are Internet or computer-related fortunes.
However, the highest new entry — coming in at 11th — is Chicago-born superstar of Irish dancing Michael Flatley (£320 million).
Based on his Goldman Sachs floatation fortune, former EU Commissioner and Attorney General Peter Sutherland (£205 million) has come in at 21st.
Other new entries include the Essex-based construction company boss Ray O’Rourke, 53, and his family (£102 million) at 38th, London building boss John Murphy, 76, and his family (£96 million) at 40th, Fran Rooney, 43, of Baltimore Technologies (£90 million) at 42nd and Brian, 41, and his wife Ruth, 46, Maccaba (£88 million) of Cognotec software who came in at 44th.
Among those also on the top 100 for the first time are Martin Birrane (£77 million), who controls the London-based Peer property group; Gilbert Little (£76 million), whose Norhern Ireland software firm was taken over by Phone.com of America; hoteliers Noel and Miriam O’Callaghan (£63 million), and James Mullen and family (£55 million) of the Thomas Pink shirt company.