Meet Paddy Dunican

He may not be from Offaly, but as a Kilbeggan man, Paddy Dunican is well-known across the county in his role as manager of Kilbeggan Racecourse.

For Paddy it?s not a job: it?s more of a love affair.

The courtship started in Paddy?s childhood, and the business of racing wooed him right through his teenage years. In 1988, the affair was solemnised, with Paddy agreeing to love, honour, and indeed, manage the 88 acre track. And these vows he has honoured faithfully ever since.

Paddy?s father, Paul, was long associated with the track, and Paul, the eldest boy out of Paul and wife Chrissie?s four daughters and three sons, can?t remember a time when they weren?t involved in the races.

“From a very young age, I would have been helping out. You could be doing any kind of jobs from manning the phones to assisting in the secretary?s office after racing. I?ve worked on the hurdles, worked in the toilets. If there was a job they were stuck to have done, as a child, you got the chance to do it.”

That, to a youngster who loved farming, and everything about country life, and who couldn?t wait to get out of school, was like a dream come true.

Paddy, educated locally with the Sisters of Mercy in Kilbeggan, went on after school to Warrenstown Agricultural College, and came home to work on the family farm. Unusually, for farmers, the Dunicans lived in the town, but then equally unusually, their land, fragmented, was right on the fringes of Kilbeggan itself.

However, in 1988, after the late Tom McCormack retired from his role at the helm of the Kilbeggan Race Committee, Paddy was approached by the committee and asked to take on the role, in a part-time capacity.

“When I started, there were just three race meetings a year, and attendances of about 12,000 a year, and sponsorship of about £2,000, and we started straight away to develop the racecourse, and we purchased the land that the racecourse was on from the Fox family, who were leasing it to us, and once we purchased the land, that gave us the asset to borrow money to invest.”

The next step was to start the hunt for sponsors, and that proved quite a manageable task, and there was a lot of interest from the business communities in Tullamore, Athlone and Mullingar.

With finances improving, and attendances increasing, the committee that runs the track with Paddy was able to embark on a programme of investment and development at the track, which is ongoing.

It hardly needs saying, but Paddy?s job is not a 9-5er.

“It?s far from a 9 to 5,” he laughs. In summer time, it could be very much seven days a week, when you are racing every fortnight, particularly when you are racing at the weekends, as you have to work that weekend, but also, the previous weekend you probably would have Turf Club inspections and Going Reports, which you have to be there for.

“If you?re running a racecourse, it?s a job that you need to enjoy and you need to love what you do.

“One thing I love about the job: it is a huge role. You are managing a small business, and when you are managing a small business, you need to have some knowledge of every aspect.

“I would be very much a ?people?s person?. And most importantly, you have to be strong in the job, because you are managing a business; you are driving it, and where you have all those committees and associations all with vested interests, you have to move ahead with what?s best for the racecourse.”

Those “committees and associations” form a long list: The Turf Committee, the National Hunt committee, the Jockeys? Association, the Trainers? Association, the the medical doctors? association, the bookmakers? association, the stable lads? association. They?re the names that trip off the tip of his tongue.

The job has changed a lot in the twenty years since Paddy entered it. “When I started first, the most important thing was promoting the racecourse and develpipng it, but now the most important thing is health and safety on the racecourse, because you are dealing with horses, people, drink, music, children, and it?s a very high risk area, and the most important thing is to run it safely.”

One memory that still lingers with him, as the death on the track of jockey Kieran Kelly.

“It was the most difficult experience, the hardest thing. And when we walked the track the next morning, after he?d passed away, someone had placed a bouquet of flowers at the jump, and that really brought everything home.

“At the end of the day, you do your best, and you can do no more: racing is a dangerous sport.”

Apart from his love for Kilbeggan racetrack in particular, Paddy loves racing itself, and would go racing a lot.

Paddy is not alone Secretary Manager of Kilbeggan Racecourse, but he is Director of the Association of Irish Racecourses, and he is Clerk of the Course for the Brosna Point to Point. On three occasions, he has received the National Racecourse Manatger of the Year award.

Outside of racing, Paddy is deeply involved in his local community, being chairman of the Kilbeggan Community Group, and involved in the Mullingar Goal Ball, and the Galway Race Ball. Paddy utters a phrase that has become something of a cliché when asked what drives him to give so much of his time to voluntary causes: “I like helping people”.

But the fact is that from Paddy, it?s not a cliché at all: he genuinely does enjoy people, and he does enjoy helping people.

While his work takes Paddy to Dublin a lot, he is not, at heart a city person. “I?m very much a country person, and love the country life, and working with country people. I get great satisfaction out of helping people, and helping projects in the town. It?s nice to look back and see that you have helped someone or helped with something.”

He has a circle of close friends, of whom he is deeply appreciative, and enjoys getting away now and again. “I like to travel, but it wouldn?t be fl

or long periods of time.”

Some years back, he returned to study, undertaking a course in auctioneering at Athlone Institute of Technology, and qualifying as an auctioneer. As well as the regular residential, commercial and agricultural estate agency work he conducts locally,

Paddy is a member of Fianna Fáil, and deeply passionate about politics. “I genuinely love politics. I love rfrollowing national politics, and have always had a big interest,” he says.

He is pleased that local man, Brian Cowen – a regular at the track – is now Taoiseach. “We met with Brian Cowen last year and he came out to the racecourse and he?s a huge interest in it, and he gave our new development a grant of €250,000.”