Tag Archives: Breege O’Donoghue

AWARD-winning North Clare businesswoman Breege O’Donoghue should be reinstated to her position on the board of Fáilte Ireland, according to Clare’s Fianna Fáil senator, who has warned about the risks of “blood letting”. The Boston native stepped down last month after controversially travelling to a non-Green List country, at a time when a major summer ‘staycation’ campaign was running. Ms O’Donoghue also tendered her resignation as Chair of the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland (DCCI), but has since been reinstated, prompting Senator Timmy Dooley to call for her to be reappointed to the tourism board. “I very much believe in the public health message,” said Senator Dooley, “but we need to be really careful of the blame game. The kind of expertise that Ms O’Donoghue has is not in huge supply. It’s not the same things as having a government minister resign. They can be moved around reasonably easily.” Ms O’Donoghue’s was the second resignation from the board of …

A North Clare business-woman, who has been at the fore of the international success of retail chain Penneys, is to retire after 37 years. Boston’s Breege O’Donoghue is group director of new markets and business development with Primark Stores and will continue in the role until September. However, the company confirmed on Monday that the Clare woman will retire later this year. Ms O’Donoghue was educated by the sisters of Mercy in Gort before going to night classes and graduating from University College Dublin with a degree in commerce in 1972. Over the course of her career, she completed many short programmes of study including at Cornell University, Harvard Business School, London School of Economics and International Language Schools in Germany, Spain and France. Ms O’Donoghue began her career in hotel management with the Great Southern Hotel Group, before leaving to set up Penneys’ human resources department in 1979 and working as a board member to develop the Primark brand …

A North Clare woman was recognised for her business acumen and leadership at the 2014 IMAGE Business Woman of the Year Awards in Dublin this week. Primark’s board director Breege O’Donoghue, from Boston, was presented with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. In accepting the award, Ms O’Donoghue (70) recalled her childhood on the Clare-Galway border, her “loving family” and especially her mother, Molly. “My mother had great influence on the family, independent, strong-minded and devoted to her husband and children, for whom she cooked, baked, knitted, made all our clothes and delighted in the joys of gardening and her beautiful flowers,” she said. Ms O’Donoghue described the farm where she grew up as both “idyllic and hard work”. “The trees were tall, the grass was green, the birds were chirping one to the other. There was no extravagance and money was always put aside for the rainy day. Christmas was magical, with all its preparations of making the plum puddings, plucking …