Aer Arann stepped into the breach taking up many of the routes following the failure of Air Wales. Cambria talks to its dynamic, inspirational CEO Padraig O’Ceidigh, a man as enthusiastic about rural regeneration and the Irish language as he is about flying.

For a man brought up as a first-language Gaelic speaker who struggled to learn English in the often unsympathetic United Kingdom of the 1950s, Padraig O’Ceidigh, founder of Aer Arann - Europe’s leading regional airline - lawyer, accountant, former mathematics teacher and publisher of Ireland’s largest circulation Gaelic newspaper is an exceptional communicator. I met him over a frugal lunch in a stylish Dublin hotel, one of the many which have mushroomed near the city’s fast-growing international airport. O’Ceidigh is a man of boundless enthusiasm and whirlwind energy dressed in the trademark style of post-Celtic tiger Irish businessmen, no-nonsense grey suit, white open-necked shirt and sportsman’s physique.

O’Ceidigh immediately launches into a discussion about Wales and the Welsh economy, and I can see that my prepared list of questions is going to be quite superfluous. His company Aer Arann, which he acquired in the early 1990s as a small loss-making operation serving the small Aran Islands community off Ireland’s west coast, has filled the gap left by the demise of Air Wales, running routes from Cardiff to Dublin and Cork.

I feel a strong affinity with Wales,” O’Ceidigh tells me, “not just the culture, but the people.” “Our peoples are similar in so many ways, and this is particularly true of the community from which I come in the rural west. We also appear to be growing in a similar way especially in relation to culture and language. There is a lot more integration; once it was isolation, now its integration.” “I know the passion I have for my country and I have enormous respect for Welsh people who have the same passion for their country. 

O’Ceidigh knows about isolation. Born into a rural community in Galway whose only hope of survival lay in picking periwinkles from the sea shore for export to the restaurants of Paris, he only started learning English when his parents moved to the UK in the 1950s. The process was painful. Not only did he find the language hard, initially, but he became the butt of stereotypical anti-Irish taunts. While this hurt him at first, it only served to strengthen his pride in his Gaelic heritage, a pride which remains as fierce as ever today. “I always use Gaelic when appropriate. I don’t push it, but my Irishness, my language and culture is part of my make up, it’s part of my DNA, and I have stood by it all along.”

The centralisation of power and wealth in Dublin is a key to O’Ceidigh’s philosophy and his vision for Aer Arann. He believes in rural regeneration and sees his airline as an essential part of the process. He finds the patronising ‘Indian reservation’ attitude of the government in Dublin towards the people of the Gaelic speaking west unacceptable and wants it to change. Local communities are vital to the future of the country. “I believe these communities should have the same facilities as people living in Dublin and other large cities.” he says. “Despite all the recent technological advances, broadband for instance, the main problem for rural communities in Ireland – as indeed in Wales – is access. People have to move around, and quick access by air is the key to this.”

nspiration came to him in a sudden flash walking on a beach in Connemara on Christmas Day in 1993. He came across an airstrip from which a tiny, loss-making Aer Arann operated a two-plane scratch service for the inhabitants of the Aran Islands which lay to the west, and the future seemed to spread out before him. From his working-class boyhood ‘career’ as a periwinkle picker, O’Ceidigh had experienced a number of career moves. A commerce degree led to a stint with accountancy firm KPMG, after which a teacher-training course led to ten enjoyable years teaching mathematics at a Jesuit school in Galway. An urge to move on saw him qualify as a solicitor, not least because he felt that law should be taught as part of the Irish educational curriculum and its neglect by the Department of Education left a serious gap in the system. He practised law for some five years before his seashore epiphany. Selling his law practice he approached the owners of Aer Arann, re-mortgaged his house, found a partner to go in with him on a 50/50 basis to raise the shortfall, and became the owner of one of the world’s smallest airlines. His business plans were sketched out on the backs of paper napkins, and he had to do all the groundwork himself for the simple reason he couldn’t afford consultants. Because of his rural working-class background, and his ignorance of the air travel business, no bank would touch him. His vision, however was crystal clear: to create a safe, profitable air service to the Aran Islands. In his first year, with a workforce of eight, carrying 5-6,000 passengers, he turned over £250,000. By 2001 this had risen to £3 million, and he had bought out his partner to hold 100% of the company. By the start of this year Aer Arann was turning over £110 million.

In the early part of this decade O’Ceidigh decided to expand the operation to become an all-Ireland regional airline and build on that. He approached Aer Lingus with a plan to feed his passengers through to them for international flights but, none too politely, they snubbed him. He then approached the Irish government and was told that with no experience (and what was worse, no money), he was crazy. But O’Ceidigh kept, as he puts it, “banging away”. He concentrated on building credibility and, just as important, a strong team. He did almost everything himself. He took no salary for two and a half years and just kept going. “It almost killed me’” he admits. An Irish bank manager friend living in the UK warned him that of the successful Irish entrepreneurs he knew, almost all had lost wealth, health and family. O’Ceidigh tells me that he nearly lost all three had it not been for the fantastic wife who stood by him all the way.

A break came when he made a somewhat unorthodox approach directly to the head of ATR in France who agreed to lease this ‘mad Irishman’ with no money aeroplanes, principally, O’Ceidigh says somewhat modestly, because he had a soft spot for ‘mad Irishmen’. It was a hunch that has worked very well for both men.

As a result of the pain and effort of those years, Aer Arann is now the fastest growing regional airline in the world, and has won every available award in Europe. The second of a new fleet of ten ATR 72-500 aircraft - part of a $180 million investment programme - was delivered earlier this month, with the remainder arriving between now and 2009. The airline operates over 600 flights a week, with (in 2006) 1.1 million passengers on 40 routes stretching beyond Ireland to other parts of the British Isles, Brittany and northern France. O’Ceidigh sees the rest of the British Isles, in particular, as the significant area for future growth.
Financial prudence was an early lesson well-learned. “The reason we’re a low-cost operator is simply because we never had the money to be a high cost operator’” O’Ceidigh says, “and this gave us a big service ethos. It all revolves around the passenger. It really hurts me personally if we provide poor service.”

Over the last few years O’Ceidigh has concentrated on building a professional management team to run the operation independently. This he feels is key to the company’s future success. “Many entrepreneurs are obsessed with power and ego. I’m just not that kind of person. I’m proud to say that Aer Arann can run independently of me.”

Not that he has decided to take things easy. Quite the contrary. O’Ceidigh is involved in a prodigious number of new ventures. He has a printing company, an aircraft maintenance operation, a company involved in the development of solar energy, an Irish language newspaper, even a second airline in Connemara, and a number of other projects. He is also Vice Chairman of Bord Fáilte, the Irish National Tourism Development Authority.

His newspaper is a particular source of pride. A weekly, in Gaelic, Foinse (Fynnon/source) came into being a decade ago, around the same time as CAMBRIA, as an apolitical publication, with young, idealistic staff, and contributors. His idea was to give young Gaelic-speakers confidence and help build up their literary skills. It’s a newspaper “which just happens to be in the Irish language”, he says. Its journalists may go on to work for English language publications, “well, that’s fine, we don’t have any bandwagons.” Produced and published in Connemara, Foinse  has a weekly print run of eight and a half thousand copies and is sold in 1700 outlets throughout Ireland.

Former teacher O’Ceidigh’s chief passion now is to encourage others to realise their potential. He spends considerable time talking to young people in the west of Ireland - and he tells them, no doubt to their astonishment, that they can do a lot better than he has. He means it. He wants them to think “Here’s a guy from the west who runs an airline. If he can do it, why can’t I? I can do it too!” I tell them “‘you’ve got a great deal more talent and more ability than I ever had or will have. Use me as a point of reference, not in the sense that you’re going to be as good as me, but that you’ve got the talent to do better.’”

O’Ceidigh feels that for far too long a whole section of rural Irish society has been marginalised and written off as being fit only for manual labour and piece-work in a factory, denied the chance to occupy roles in marketing or management. There is genuine bitterness in his tone when he says that all too often attitudes have been “These are monkeys, give them peanuts and let them scratch themselves. That’s all they’re good for. I want to inspire people to get themselves out of their comfort zone and say ‘Hell. I can do it!’”

We return to the subject of Wales and the service Aer Arann now provides us, but I sense that he is keen to talk about the broader picture of renewal and regeneration. There are many of us in Wales, I tell him, who look to Ireland as an example of what can be done by inspiration, hard graft and self-belief, not forgetting, of course, that blindingly obvious, fundamental prerequisite which has made it all possible - which Wales lacks and Ireland won for itself more than three-quarters of a century ago: political independence and sovereignty. O’Ceidigh nods enthusiastically in agreement, and takes up the theme in inspirational fashion.

I feel there’s a real revolution in the air. It’s an extremely positive revolution, not just for us, but for our children and our children’s children. We can learn an awful lot from each other and we can work together. I would certainly love to be part of this revolution. I would be very proud to be associated in some small way with the economic, cultural and social growth of the Welsh nation. If there is any way I, or Aer Arann, can be supportive of this process, you will not find us wanting. Let’s go for it!”

Let’s hope that there are many budding Padraig O’Ceidighs growing up in rural Wales right now, ready to take advantage of the opportunities the future holds.

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