Bernie Cahill, who died on August 17th aged 70, was the businessman who rescued Aer Lingus from the brink of insolvency in the early 1990s.
Also chairman of Irish Sugar when it was floated as Greencore on the Stock Exchange in 1991, he spent most of his working life in the dairy industry, building a business worth £125 million when sold.
Only late in his career did he come to prominence as a figure called on by Government to turn around ailing semi-State groups. His direct style was an asset where the financial requirement to trade effectively often conflicted with the interests of Government and workers. He also had the drive and ability to take difficult, pragmatic decisions and see them through. He was described as a man of calibre, not given to abandon a strategy.
Unusually, he was appointed to senior State positions by governments across the political divide. A Fine Gael/Labour administration made him chairman of Irish Sugar in 1985 and a Fianna Fβil government led by Charles Haughey appointed him chairman of Aer Lingus in 1991.
As a job-creation vehicle, Irish Sugar was never a truly commercial company and his closure of plants in Tuam and Thurles was seen as crucial to the company's commercial transformation. The closures paved the way for its Stock Market listing, but they were difficult as Thurles was in the constituency of the then Minister for Agriculture, Michael O'Kennedy.
He faced down calls to resign from Greencore in 1991 after its chief executive, Chris Comerford, claimed a private profit of £2.1 million from one of its deals. Once the deal was exposed, Bernie Cahill became a target in the political storm generated by the affair. Stating that he was not to blame because what had happened could never have shown up on the company's financial reporting system, he argued that he took quick remedial action once he learned of the situation.
Weeks earlier, he had been made chairman of Aer Lingus and it was in this position that his reputation as one of the State's most capable business figures was secured.
The company's very future was jeopardised after it incurred serious losses in the wake of the Gulf War and the failure of the flotation of Guinness Peat Aviation, in which it had a significant shareholding. This exposed serious internal weakness and Bernie Cahill was made "supremo" in 1993, responsible for the company's survival.
As mastermind of a radical rescue plan that demanded co-operation from management and pay restraint from unions, he secured £175 million in State aid. Though lower than the £400 million initially sought, it was an enormous sum. He argued that the company could not survive without it. As part of a voluntary severance programme, 1,300 staff left Aer Lingus and its maintenance subsidiary TEAM was sold to the Danish group FLS Industries.
The mark of the plan's success was a decision by the Government in late 1999 to sanction the flotation of Aer Lingus. But the flotation option has been all but abandoned due to poor market sentiment about the "full service" aviation industry, and projected losses this year, which followed record profits in 2000.
Earlier this year, Bernie Cahill denied an allegation by the chief executive, Michael Foley, that he had colluded with the board subcommittee that upheld sexual harassment complaints made against Mr Foley. Mr Foley, who denied the allegations, was sacked last June.
Born on October 13th, 1930, Bernie Cahill grew up in the village of Rerrin on Bere Island. He was the third of five children born to Dan Cahill and his wife Helena (nΘe Sullivan-Doyle). Dan Cahill was a publican, grocer and farmer, whose father, Richard, had been stationed at the Royal Navy base on Bere Island. He also ran a boat-hire business.
Bernie Cahill attended Lawrence's Cove National School on the island. His secondary schools were Rockwell College, Co Tipperary, and Blackrock College, Dublin. He studied dairy science at University College Cork, graduating in 1951 with a Bachelor of Science degree.
He worked first for the North Clare Travelling Creamery in Ennistymon, and then for the Condensed Milk Company in Co Tipperary. During this period he met his wife Kathleen (nΘe Wall), from Ennistymon. They married in 1959.
He worked in Britain for Northern Foods, Independent Diaries and the Milk Marketing Board before joining Grand Metropolitan's Express Dairies in 1957. In 1965, he returned to Ireland to develop a business for Express and selected west Cork for a new dairy processing factory at Ballineen, which opened in 1968. Express was worth £125 million when split in 1992 and sold by Grand Metropolitan to Waterford Foods and a group of Cork co-operatives. At that stage, its operations included Carbery Milk Products, Carbery Distillers and Virginia Milk Products, a half share in Premier Dairies in Dublin and a Northern Ireland operation. One of the company's most innovative developments was a process for the production of alcohol from whey, a cheese by-product. Alcohol produced by Carbery was sold to Gilbeys for use in Bailey's Irish Cream. The process was widely copied globally.
He was chairman for a period of Feltrim Mining, a quoted exploration company run by Conor Haughey and one of the poorest performing businesses linked to Bernie Cahill. He was also a director of An Bord Bainne from 1977 until 1988 and was board member of the brewer Murphy-Heineken.
Bernie Cahill could be very charming, but sometimes had little to say in public. "People took him as being gruff, a big character. He wasn't. He was basically shy," said a friend.
He is survived by his wife, Kathleen, son Daniel, daughters, Margaret and Anne, sisters, Connie and Carmel, and brother Joe.
Bernard (Bernie) Michael Cahill: born 1930; died, August 2001