Hugh Tunney:THE BUSINESSMAN Hugh Tunney, who has died aged 83, rose from humble beginnings to live at Classiebawn Castle built by Lord Mount Temple at Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, and later the home of Earl Mountbatten. "You cannot be a king without a castle," he told a business associate when he leased Classiebawn from the earl.
Born in Trillick, Co Tyrone, in 1928, he was one of nine children of a cattle dealer. After serving his time as an apprentice butcher in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh, he went to London where he worked in butchers’ shops and meat factory boning halls.
Later, having worked for the Molloghan Brothers, meat traders from Ardagh, Co Longford, he set up a live cattle export business UK Meat and Livestock based in Belfast.
Having sold UK Meats and bought Abbey Meats, Whiteabbey, Co Antrim, he also acquired processing plants in Clones, Co Monaghan and Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.
By the mid-1970s Tunney Meats was slaughtering 8,000 head of cattle a week. Forty per cent of the weekly cattle kill was placed in storage under the European Union’s beef intervention scheme, while the company continued catering for British and European customers.
As the total number of cattle slaughtered in Ireland soared, Tunney reaped the full benefit of the boom and made record profits.
In 1975, he became owner of the Gresham Hotel, Dublin, and subsequently purchased Sachs Hotel also in Dublin, as well as the Talbot Hotel, Wexford and the Central Hotel, Bundoran, Co Donegal.
Two years later he sold the Talbot and Gresham hotels, but retained a suite in the latter hotel.
In 1989, the long and bitter dispute between Tunney and Philip Smyth, who held the tenancy of Sachs Hotel, began. A claim of fraud against Tunney failed in the High Court.
In another case he took, Smyth said that calls were made to the UK authorities on phone lines linked to Tunney. These calls accused Smyth of laundering drug money for the IRA through the hotel.
In 2002, the High Court found that the calls had been made by Tunney’s secretary, and awarded damages to Smyth’s company, Genport. On appeal, the Supreme Court reduced “exemplary damages” of £250,000 to £100,000, while “general damages” of £50,000 were upheld.
The row surfaced at the beef tribunal when Smyth accused Tunney Meats of not submitting correct profit margins to the Department of Agriculture. In his report in 1994 Mr Justice Hamilton said he disapproved of the way Smyth bought documents from a clerk at Tunney Meats to use in a campaign of conflict against Tunney, and also criticised Smyth’s “attempt to purchase the testimony of other witnesses”.
However, there was evidence that for every 500 to 600 cartons of intervention beef deboned at Tunney Meats between 20 and 40 would be siphoned off for commercial sale. In 1994, Tunney sold his meat business to the Kerry Group for an estimated £10 million.
In 1976, he began leasing Classiebawn Castle. This was after Earl Mountbatten’s offer to gift the castle to the nation was declined by the Government.
Tunney spent most of his time at Classiebawn, but it was not an entirely idyllic existence. In 1981, Sinn Féin members staged a sit-in at the castle in support of the H-Blocks campaign. In 1995, a bomb was found outside the castle door during the visit to Ireland by the Prince of Wales.
In the past decade he became involved in court actions seeking the eviction of former estate workers, and found himself in dispute with local people and the planning department of Sligo County Council over work on sand dunes, the felling of trees and the blocking of rights of way.
Hugh Tunney was reported to have been related to the former world heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney.
He died at the Blackrock Clinic following a short illness. He is survived by his wife Eileen, daughters Nuala and Mauretta and sons Hugh and James.
Hugh Tunney: Born 1928; died June 20th , 2011