Hugo MacNeill was once hailed as one of the best fullbacks to play amateur rugby in Ireland before it became professional. The Trinity and Oxford graduate used rugby to take stances against IRA violence and apartheid. He joined global investment bank Goldman Sachs, dubbed the Vampire Squid of international finance, and quickly rose the ranks here in Ireland.

Now he is looking to enter public life in a bid for the Seanad where he hopes to focus on North-South relations in Ireland and making third-level education more accessible to those with intellectual disabilities.

In this in-depth interview, MacNeill spoke about:

  • How amateur rugby differs from professional rugby now
  • Working with some of the biggest names in business with Goldman Sachs including Tony O’Reilly
  • His views on Goldman Sachs at the time of the global crash
  • Working with the government to burn the bondholders and recapitalise the banks.
  • His decision to enter political life
  • His ambition to work on North-South relations in Ireland as well as making third level education more accessible to those with intellectual disabilities if he made it to the Seanad.
  • Meeting Nelson Mandela after protesting apartheid through rugby.

Sam Smyth (SS): Hello, I’m Sam Smyth and welcome to my podcast with The Currency.

Look through any archive photographs of my guest and he is either dressed for dinner or the sports field. He’s either wearing a rugby shirt and shorts or a bow tie and tuxedo. Hugo MacNeill was one of our most famous fullbacks in Irish rugby and now he has stepped down as one of our most successful international bankers. His ambition now is to be elected to one of the three University of Dublin seats in the Senate.

Hugo, you won 37 caps for Ireland. You played for Leinster, and the British and Irish Lions, in the 1980s. You were also a member of the Irish team that won the Triple Crown in 1982 and 1985. And that was after you played for the TCD team that won the Collingwood Cup in 1979.

You studied economics and literature and did a postgraduate course at Oxford before joining Goldman Sachs in September 1988, where you stayed for 30 years and became managing director of investment banking. Hugo, I would have to say here that your career up until the time you started work, could have been the inspiration for the song My Perfect Cousin by the Undertones. But anyway, all that will never happen again because no rugby player in the future will ever play international rugby and have a dynamic professional career. Why is that?

Hugo MacNeill (HM): Well, it’s harder. I’m not sure that no one will. But certainly, when we were playing, it was in the amateur era. So, there was not a question of will I get a job or won’t I get a job. You had to get a job. And so that had a lot of benefits with it as well, because you were able to have a full-time university life. And I loved it. I loved studying economics at Trinity. I loved studying Anglo Irish literature with people like Brendan Kennelly, David Norris, Terence Brown, and then going on and being able to spend three fantastic years at Oxford. So that was really brilliant. And so you almost were able to have two lives – the life of an international rugby player and the life of both a student and then work. But at the end of it, it was getting very tough. It was very hard to do both of them.

SS: Which was the career and which was the hobby?

HM: The career was the career and the hobby was the rugby. And I loved being able to have two lives. And people sometimes say to me now, ‘do you wish you’d played in the professional era? You must be really sorry that you didn’t play in the professional era?’ And I have huge respect for what is going on at the moment. But there were only two things that I missed. One, I’d love to have played for Leinster in the European Cup. And secondly, I’d love to have trained like an athlete – knowing all the best ways to train.

SS: Do you think you would have been a better player?

HM: I think so. Learning about stretching and conditioning and all of the things that the players today have. But I have great sympathy for them because I think it’s very tough. No rugby player, or a tiny fraction of the number of players playing professional rugby, will retire when they finish playing or would be in a position to retire. And they’re all one tackle away…

SS: Do you mean financially?

HM: Financially. Not that you want somebody in their early 30s to say, ‘I never have to work again.’ It’s not football. It’s very different.

So, a tiny fraction will be financially secure and they’re all one tackle away, Sam, from their career being ended. So, I have huge admiration, for the professional players who give us so much pleasure now. And if anyone ever says to me, ‘will you talk to so-and-so?’ I will do. And I’ve spoken to a lot of guys who are playing in the professional game. It’s tough, it’s glamorous, but it’s tough combining the two as well.

SS: Is there any argument at all for amateurism?

HM: Well, amateurism is the vast majority of the people playing. That will always be there because there’s only going be a certain amount of people who will want to play professional rugby, and would be capable of playing professional rugby. So, the amateur will thrive.

SS: Does paying players not make rugby more egalitarian for those from a more disadvantaged background?

HM: I completely agree with you. One of the things I remember when I was playing rugby and people used to talk about Wales and they used to romanticise about the Welsh miners going down the mine and then playing for Wales. And then I was saying, look, if somebody could avoid going down a pit to earn a living and was able to do it just by playing rugby, that’s a much better option.

I think your question is right. If someone’s gift is their ability to play rugby and they didn’t have the chance to go to university or maybe didn’t have so many other career options, absolutely that is great. I have such admiration for them at the moment because if I look at the last team I played with for Ireland and I look at what all the guys are doing now, they all went into some kind of job or career. We meet again, we love to talk about the old times, we’d love to have won more matches, we’d love to have got this try – but we look back with great fondness. My fear is that a lot of the guys who are playing professionally now, who are coming out at the end of their time playing, are meeting the guys who they were at school with and they’re kind of saying, ‘gosh, so-and-so is just so far ahead of me. I now have to go and get a job, I want to support a family.’

And it’s not easy. I think the good news is, they’re getting a lot of advice and there are players’ organisations who are helping them think about life after rugby. But it is a hard balance and I have huge respect for the guys who are playing now.

SS: You were I suppose of your generation of players, and great players through that time, you would arguably be professionally and therefore financially one of the most successful of those.

HM: If I look at the people that I played with or played against, there’s a lot of people who have actually gone out and had successful careers. I’ve met Steve Cutler the other day, who’s the Australian international and the CEO of Icon, one of the world’s leading companies. And there’s a lot of people around the world who I think, because it was an amateur game and because we had the ability to go to university, you had to sort of work. Then, some of the competitive aspects that made people very good rugby players actually translated into making them very successful in whatever they did afterwards as well.

Hugo MacNeill looks at the players of professional rugby now with great admiration and states that he would have benefited from the athletic training they receive today. Photo: Bryan Meade.

SS: And they had, of course, an educational background that was conducive to doing well. Rugby players who are in it as a career are going to essentially end up as muscle men, while the professionals provide the brains and collect huge fees, if you do know what I mean. It’s going to be a game now that’s going to be dumbed down to a certain extent on what you do on the field, i.e. some of it extremely dangerous and tough is going to dominate. Is that a danger?

HM: . I think certainly the physical aspect of rugby has just gotten more and more. And you watch any of the big games now and the internationals, the physical collisions are so much a part of the game. I think the game has to sort of balance that out. I think still, the most successful teams like the All Blacks play a balanced game as well. But, even if you are the most recent winners of the World Cup, South Africa, were a very big physical side as well.

SS: If you get hit by one of those guys running at you, it’d be like getting knocked down by a Ford Fiesta?

HM: And I think what has had to happen, and I think rightly so, is the authorities are recognising the increased physicality and have tried to take a very hard line on certain things that can lead to injuries such as contesting the ball in the air. You have a duty of care to let somebody catch it, try to be very harsh on things that could lead to physical injury.

But there’s no doubt. My sister is the physicist in the family, but the mass by velocity that you’re seeing now is very different. And, we probably haven’t seen, Sam, the the long term implications of that.

Peter Sutherland, Tony O’Reilly and life as a management consultant

SS: You’ve watched the greatest players of recent years? I’m thinking about Ronan O’Gara, Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell, Johnny Sexton. Do any of those impress you as being a future Tony O’Reilly in business?

HM: Well, they might. I think the people that you mentioned are all very impressive individuals. I actually bumped into Brian O’Driscoll on the way back from London yesterday. And I think, Paul O’Connell, Ronan O’Gara are not only great players, but they’re great individuals as well.

SS: Are they interested in business the way you were for instance?

HM: I don’t know. They follow different things. Brian is doing a lot of stuff very successfully in the media and I think he has a number of business interests. Ronan has been a very good coach throughout rugby. And Paul has done different things. But I think they’re all very impressive people. And I’m sure that they’ll be successful in whatever they choose to get themselves in.

SS: And just on the way out the door, how good is Johnny Sexton?

HM: Johnny Sexton, I think has been one of our greatest players that we’ve ever had over the last few years. And I think he’s been central in the great moments for Leinster and he’s been central for the great moments for Ireland. Obviously it was a difficult game against England recently. But, no one will ever forget Johnny Sexton’s drop goal against France that actually, if it hadn’t gone over, would’ve killed the chances of a grand slam.

The New Zealanders say: “Great players make great impact in big games.” And Johnny Sexton, if you look at his career over the period, you would say Johnny  is a person who’s made big impact in big games.

SS: The late Peter Sutherland. He held your hand making the jump from rugby to Goldman Sachs, didn’t he? How helpful was your fame as a sportsman? How did it help you become a successful banker?

HM: I worked firstly with Boston Consulting Group in London for a while before I joined Goldman Sachs. And I think it was interesting because people were curious about you, but also they weren’t going to work harder so you could go off and play rugby or they’d work weekends and cover for you. So, I think it was interesting, but not more than that. Because I think ultimately you had to try and be good at your job. It was the time before rugby went professional, so I had to have a career. And I think at the end when I was working with Boston Consulting Group, which is one of the world’s largest consulting firms, and trying to play international rugby, it was a bit like the fault lines of an earthquake rubbing up against each other.

I was living in London at the time. It was very difficult to do the two. And ultimately, I had to stop playing rugby. But I was very lucky, Sam, because I had kind of seen what was happening. And so, I extended my studies. So, I got eight years playing rugby for the Irish team. So by that stage, I was ready to move on.

What I’m probably most proud of the thing that we worked on was working with the Irish government on the recapitalisation of the banks, post the financial crisis

Hugo MacNeill

SS: What did you actually do in Boston Consulting? What projects did you look at?

HM: Well in Boston Consulting Group we worked with a lot of the major international companies on strategy, consulting assignments. I remember we worked for an insurance company in England about their strategy. We worked with Rothman’s about whether they would look at some of the luxury goods strategy. So, you were working with people who were analysing what a company was doing with the strategic position within the industry.

SS: You’d look at the marketing of it.

HM: Yeah, Like McKinsey, BCG and Bain were sort of leading strategy consulting firms at the time, and I think they still remain that as well.

SS: It’s an interesting life I suppose. As an investment banker you were a key player in some of the biggest business deals over the past generation. Did you bring Tony O’Reilly into the Eircom deal with George Soros?

HM: Yeah. When we saw the Eircom deal happening and being announced.

SS: That was the State selling it off wasn’t it?

HM: Well it was after that. It was after it had gone public and there had been some difficulties. And Denis O’Brien indicated that they were going to bid for it. And we just saw it was mentioned in the press that Tony O’Reilly was also considering getting involved. So, we got in contact with him and he decided to pursue it.

SS: Did you know him through rugby?

HM: I knew him through rugby. And I knew him mostly through The Ireland Funds, which was a wonderful organisation that he and Dan Rooney had set up in the early 70s to make sure that money from North America at the time was going to the right places in Northern Ireland and not the wrong places. This extraordinary organisation that Tony and Dan set up has subsequently raised over $500 million of money that has gone to initially peace and reconciliation projects in Northern Ireland and now to a broad range of projects and community projects across the country without costing the state anything.

SS: So, you had Tony’s cell phone number, I presume?

HM: When I was living in England, The Ireland Fund of Great Britain was being established. And Tony asked a number of us would we join the board, which I was delighted to do. And then you mentioned Peter Sutherland. Peter Sutherland came on subsequently to be chairman of The Ireland Fund in Great Britain. And Peter had great leadership because he was the champion of what was called the Forgotten Irish campaign.

The ‘forgotten Irish’ were the people who had gone over from Ireland to build the roads, the motorways of Britain. And many of the men just finished up in very difficult and straightened circumstances and really, really hard times. The Ireland Funds helped those community projects, who worked with people who had found themselves in those kinds of circumstances. So that’s how I first got involved. I got to know Tony really through the Ireland Funds and I’ve stayed involved with The Ireland Funds ever since. It’s just a phenomenal organisation that continues to do remarkable work.

SS: Do you still keep in touch with George Soros?

HM: I never knew George Soros. I was never involved.

SS: His money was in there, I think?

HM: They were one of the ones that were investing.

SS: It was a hugely successful deal. I know that everybody got a good dinner from it. I think at that time, Denis O’Brien was the under bidder for that. He’d be a tough competitor, I presume?

HM: They were both very strong competitors. The contest went on for quite a while and it could have probably gone either way. But in the end, it was Tony O’Reilly who won it.

SS: Did you ever work with Denis O’Brien after that?

HM: No, we never actually worked with him.

Successful flotation, unsuccessfully sales

“People sometimes say the big M&A deals, they’re interesting, but I think with an IPO, you get to know the company at an early stage.”

SS: With Goldman, you advised the Smurfit group when Michael Smurfit was CEO.

HM: I wouldn’t have known him. We worked with a number of Irish companies who went to the stock market, including Smurfit Kappa and also Cantrell & Cochraneand also Aer Lingus and subsequently Ardagh and AIB. And so, there was a number of Irish companies that when they’ve gone public we have…

SS: Cream of the crops.

HM: Well, yeah. But there was a number of other banks involved as well. We weren’t dominant.

SS: You wouldn’t get it all would you?

HM: No, but it was a privilege. And actually sometimes I think taking a company public is the most exciting and interesting transaction. People sometimes say the big M&A deals, they’re interesting, but I think with an IPO, you get to know the company at an early stage. You get to know all the key management. You come along on their journey, getting themselves prepared to go to the…

I remember meeting Michael O’Leary at the time and we were saying it was a good job that the transaction had been so spectacularly unsuccessful.

Hugo MacNeill

SS: Yeah, but you weren’t involved, were you, in Tony Ryan’s venture, GPA?

HM: That was before I was involved. But subsequently we actually tried to, and it was reported at the weekend, the story of where Tony wanted to try and sell Ryanair at any price. And a very young Michael O’Leary, who is the assistant saying, ‘we’ve got to get rid of this.’ I mean, it had lost something like £20 million over five years. And we were asked to take this mandate. So we did actually the sales memo and we went around to every airline in Europe. And none of them would even take a meeting with us about Ryanair. And we went to Aer Lingus and, of course, they had to have a look at it. And we had done this model where you put the synergies and tried to look at what would combining the two companies look like.

And previously, Goldman had worked for British Caledonian Airline when it was sold to British Airways. And they had done this model of what combining the two companies would look like. And we did the same exercise for Aer Lingus and Ryanair and putting every positive assumption, within reason, obviously it was a legal document. We went to Aer Lingus and went into the boardroom, and with this presentation to the senior Aer Lingus management, of this model of why, if by combining Aer Lingus and Ryanair, it would be worth £20 million pounds. And I think we would have taken half of that. They looked at us as though we had just taken a large pile of manure and dumped it on the board table. We were almost run out of the place.

When I came back, when Peter Sutherland asked me to come back to Ireland, and that was in the early 90s, to cover Irish companies, I remember meeting Michael O’Leary at the time and we were saying it was a good job that the transaction had been so spectacularly unsuccessful.

Now, Michael to come in and do subsequently what he did was absolutely phenomenal. But, if there was ever a case of being pleased that a transaction had absolutely flopped, trying to sell Ryanair was definitely one of them.

“We worked in the past with CRH, with Greencore, with most of the banks. We worked with Ardagh. We worked subsequently with Total Produce.”

SS: Those guys, Tony O’Reilly, Tony Ryan, Michael Smurfit, they were the golden generation, I suppose, of that time. You know each of them…

HM: No, I never had any dealings with Tony Ryan. With Michael Smurfit, when we were doing the IPO of Kappa, he had moved on. Gary McGann and Ian Curley were leading the company at the time. So those were the people who we were interacting with most of the time.

SS: But Tony O’Reilly…

HM: Yeah, and I got to know Tony through The Ireland Funds, really, and then business subsequently.

SS: Then there was the generation who came after them. There was Denis O’Brien, Dermot Desmond. Did you do any business with those guys?

HM: No, as it turned out we didn’t really do any business with those. We worked with a lot of other companies. We worked in the past with CRH, with Greencore, with most of the banks. We worked with Ardagh. We worked subsequently with Total Produce. And we were just lucky to work with a wide range of Irish companies as they’ve really done fantastically over the last number of years.

Burning bondholders and dealing with the wreckage of Irish Nationwide

Hugo MacNeill stepped down from Goldman Sachs to pursue a life in public life as he hopes to win a seat in the Seanad. Photo: Byran Meade.

SS: You were there at a time when the reputation of banks was fairly low. They were a bit like casino operators in many people’s eyes. How important is ethics to you in business and can greed get in the way?

HM: I think ethics is very important. And I’ve actually turned down getting into a number of transactions and situations where we were asked to get into and I was not comfortable with the ethics around it.

There was the financial crisis and people understandably were very upset with banks. I never got involved with any subprime mortgages. But what we did, and what I’m probably most proud of the thing that we worked on was working with the Irish government on the recapitalisation of the banks, post the financial crisis, and that had four elements to it.

One, designing contingent capital securities to provide a buffer for the banks. Secondly, what was called a liability management exercise, meaning burning bondholders, seeing how much they would get. And we worked also with bringing in investors into Bank of Ireland and also with the sale of Irish Life.

Probably the most satisfying transaction was that whole package. But in one of them, people say, “well, what did it benefit?” On the liability management exercise, which is actually burning bondholders, we advise the government that for junior bondholders in AIB, they should be given a very low rate of 20 cents in the euro to swap into shares in Bank of Ireland. There were three other investment banks working for the Bank of Ireland who said this is crazy. That’s way too aggressive by Goldman. Nobody will swap. And you will have to put the capital into it. So, we said give them 20 cents in the euro, others will give them 65 cents in the euro.

Now, fortunately, and to the great credit, not to Goldman Sachs, we were just advisers to the Department of Finance and the NTMA who had the choice to make. Would they follow our aggressive line backed up by expert legal opinion by Arthur Cox, who said, ‘look, if they don’t accept this low offer, give them nothing.’ Because if the government hadn’t stepped in.

SS: That’s the risk..

HM: So, what does all of that mean? What did that end up saving in the end? They offered them 20 cents. We got a very big take up and, I can’t breach confidentiality but it was reported in the press, that the benefits to the state on that one transaction were €800 million. And the credit to that should go to the Department of Finance and to the NTMA, because at the end of the day we’re just giving advice and then we’re going to move on. But they would have to live with the consequences.

SS: I’m not sure much credit was being given though at that time.

HM: Understandably.

SS: In the run up to the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs, I don’t know if you were personally involved, but did you advise Michael Fingleton and Irish Nationwide on its potential sale?

HM: We were asked by the government to look at Irish Nationwide as a potential sale because they had had approaches from a number of other parties.

SS: Sorry, you were asked by the government?

HM: By the government to look and see. Anglo Irish Bank was so successful, people were looking around and seeing was there other things that looked like them? And so, the Irish Nationwide had received a number of offers of approaches and the government received offers of approaches for Irish Nationwide. And we were brought in. There wasn’t a long list of people who were interested. And the environment kind of turned at the time. And so, this is the assignment that was originally to sell Irish Nationwide, turned into an assignment to help the government marshal the information around Irish Nationwide to actually try to fix it, to manage it. They had a relatively small management team at the time.

“The assignment moved very quickly trying to sell the Irish Nationwide into to try and work with the government on how to deal with the problem.”

SS: Although at that time I presume, that you and your people would have had to have a look under the bonnet, so to speak, i.e. have a good look at the books in Irish Nationwide.

HM: Yeah. And then it had become very clear that this wasn’t going to be possible to sale and actually that there was a major problem there.

SS: You spotted then that this looked a bit like…

HM: Well the assignment moved very quickly trying to sell the Irish Nationwide into to try and work with the government on how to deal with the problem.

SS: Was there ever a suggestion that somebody call the police?

HM: Was there a suggestion that someone call the police?

HM: Yeah, that there might actually be potential fraud or illegal activity there.

SS: Well, I think as you saw it subsequently turned out in the inquiries that there has been, that the proper procedures were actually… And they’re still ongoing?

HM: And they’re still ongoing.

SS: I mean, there’s some things that just never end.

HM: But as I say, they had our involvement because they had received unsolicited offers. But once you actually looked at it closely, you realise that there was a major problem here.

SS: You were a guy in the white hat going around town at that time. Did you know Sean Fitzpatrick?

HM: Not really, no. We never worked with Anglo Irish Bank. I knew of Sean, but we never worked with Anglo Irish Bank.

SS: Other people in your business, in the financial business, thought he was the best thing that ever happened in this town.

HM: Well, different people have different views.

SS: Well, you saw how the film finished, I suppose.

HM: Absolutely. We never worked with them.

Goldman Sachs and the financial crisis

SS: In the Business Post recently – you said that your career highlight was advising the state during the financial crisis. And you reckon that you got more right than you got wrong?

HM: The main thing was that those four situations I described was the recapitalisation of the banks. And we had a large team with a number of Irish people in that. So, the total of the four constituent parts I mentioned was worth around €6-7 billion in total.

Delivering an outcome on the liability management, the burning the bondholders, as the press reported, over €800 million saving to the state, I think that’s a pretty good outcome. And that was only on one of the four components. So that’s why I said it was the favourite transaction in my career, because it was working for the Irish state, it was working with the government, it was working with the NTMA, it was working with the Department of Finance.

It’s very rare sometimes in our business to be able to quantify the benefits or the impact of advice. But in this kind of situation, there was two competing proposals. We said give a very low amount of money to the bondholders. There was an alternative made by other investment banks to give them much higher..

SS: 60 and 70 per cent.

HM: That was the outcome coming through.

“It’s not that I’m saying not guilty. I haven’t been involved in the property stuff. In the last few years I’ve been working part-time.”

SS: You said that you were never involved on the property side of Goldman Sachs business in Ireland. Did you speak out internally in that? Because there was, for instance, 2016 I think, there was a report that 200 families feared eviction in Tyrrelstown after a deal was put together between Goldman and Irish investors?

What happened there?

HM: Well, I hadn’t been involved in the property. I was working in a different area of Goldman. I’ve worked there for nearly 30 years. There’s different units, there’s different parts of it. And I was just working on the advisory side. And actually, in recent years, obviously, now I’ve stepped away, but in recent years, I was just working half-time on the on the advisory side.

So, I never had any expertise in property. It’s not washing your hands it’s just saying that I didn’t really know anything about property. Obviously, yes, as concerned as a citizen, I wish we hadn’t had a situation where we had to have set up Nama. I wish we hadn’t had a situation where we had to try and bring in capital. When it was first mentioned about investing, the late Peter Sutherland and I said, internally you’ve just got to be aware of the sensitivity…

SS: Your end of the business, I think Hugo, spent €8 billion buying distressed debt in Ireland. Now you’ve special purpose vehicles for that, offshore entities and various structures, including Section 110 tax breaks. All of that is absolutely legal, of course, but as somebody who’s now thinking of moving into public life, do you feel that that was maybe a little too clever by half?

HM: I’m not trying to avoid questions. I wasn’t involved. I haven’t been involved properly. I’m very happy to talk at length about issues that I know about. And I’m just really not familiar…

SS: Not guilty as charged?

HM: It’s not that I’m saying not guilty. I haven’t been involved in the property stuff. In the last few years I’ve been working part-time. I know I’m part of an organisation that has different entities and you fly under the same flag as well. So, I’m not trying to be dismissive. It’s just it wasn’t a part that I was involved in. I understand the extreme sensitivity around it. And therefore, I think, I would only comment on it if I actually had something meaningful to say.

SS: Hugo, it’s not a personal attack on yourself.

HM: And I can understand why…

Working for the so-called The Vampire Squid of finance

Goldman Scahs operates a complex corporate structure to manage its assorted Irish debt portfolios.

SS: In the crash of 2008, Goldman Sachs became a lightning rod for popular rage, more from buying and selling extremely sophisticated but worthless financial products. And Goldman Sachs actually called investors who bought them “Muppets.”

Were you ashamed when your company was getting that reputation?

HM: Absolutely. When I read that, I was absolutely disgusted. I’d worked in Goldman before that. You started this is this interview with a question about ethics. I had turned down lucrative transactions on our side, on the investment banking side, because I wasn’t comfortable with the ethics around it. And therefore, when I saw other parts of Goldman and many other investment banks around the subprime crisis, yeah, I was disgusted. I was angry. That’s why I was very pleased that we could subsequently, to that, work with the Irish government to recapitalise the banking system and do the kind of things that banks should be doing and not the kind of things that they shouldn’t.

SS: Goldman’s CEO, he was paid $54 million in 2007 as the chief executive. And the next year, 2008, the bank received $10 million dollars of taxpayers money. I don’t know if you remember that time, but Rolling Stone magazine described Goldman Sachs as a, and I quote: “A great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” This is a very poetic way of saying terribly rude things isn’t it?

HM: Yeah. You are disgusted. You are annoyed. All you can do, Sam, is control your actions over the areas that which you operate.

SS: And you were Goldman Sachs manager of investments through the boom.

HM: No. I was the managing director Ireland of investment banking, which was the advisory side.

SS: I’m not suggesting you were part of the vampire squid.

HM: Sometimes when people read titles…Managing director, there’s thousands of managing directors. There’s analyst, associate managing directors and vice presidents and managing directors. All you can control is the thing you do yourself. Right through my career I’ve tried to work ethically. I’ve turned down lucrative business for Goldman Sachs because I wasn’t comfortable with the ethics of it. Obviously, when I saw other parts of the entity that I worked for involved in things, yeah, I was not happy at all. And then you get very angry and you get very frustrated.

“I understand the frustration and I understand the anger of people.”

SS: Irish people have a very special reason for hating banks. The average mortgage rate in Ireland, I think, was 2.9 per cent. Nearly double the EU average. It’s less than one per cent in Denmark and Finland. I see Irish banks are beginning to compete. Why in God’s name do Irish banks need to get double the interest rates that other banks do? It’s like a tax for their incompetence.

HM: I don’t know, you’d really have to ask them. I’m happy to speak about the areas that I know something about, but it’s really not appropriate for me to be speaking on behalf of the banks. I’m not trying to be evasive. I’m very happy to talk to you about things that I know about.

SS: You were in banking and banking was regarded fairly low. A bit like, shall you say, snake’s excrement. They really did get a bad reputation. Are the public wrong, do you think, to view banks so harshly?

HM: When there is wrongdoing or whether there is practice that’s not right, yeah you couldn’t criticise the public.

SS: No bankers were jailed even in America. I think one was jailed in America or something. But wasn’t it extraordinary that no one had to bear the consequences of some of the terrible, awful things that were done in the name of banks. And no one had to pay the price?

HM: I understand the frustration and I understand the anger of people. But as I said, I don’t mean to be repeating but all you can do is operate yourself in the way that you think is ethical, all you can do is operate in the way you think is right. And that’s what I’ve tried to do. Of course, it’s frustrating.

SS: You had a very successful career and you emerged from it with an upstanding reputation.

Your name is not on any of the rich lists. I’m sure you’re delighted at that. But I did look it up. One website said you’re worth €100 million. Another one said you were worth between €100,000 and €1 million. It’s fairly accurate. Did you retire from banking a wealthy man?

HM: No. I’m going to still work and I’m going to continue to work, And certainly, any of those things are completely, completely wrong.

SS: When you land a substantial deal, presumably and quite rightly, you do get paid commission?

HM: The deals I mentioned were over a 20 year period. Ireland is an important market for me. I talked about five or six IPOs over a 20 year period. So, it’s not the largest market. It’s not the biggest market. If you were just pursuing the financial side of it, it wouldn’t have come back to Ireland. I would have said, can I stay in London? Can I go to New York? Can I go to Tokyo? Or something like that.

SS: Well, there’s Mnuchin I see everywhere Trump goes. He was one of your top guys, wasn’t he?

HM: I never met him. I don’t know how long he was there for. I certainly didn’t come across him.

Family values and entering political life

SS: There’s always a Goldman Sachs guy somewhere near the top table, I think. Perhaps that’s a compliment. But getting away from money and vulgarity. Your wife, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, she’s a barrister, she was a policy advisor to the Taoiseach Enda Kenny, she was elected to the Dáil recently for a Fine Gael. You hope to get into the Senate. Do you hope to have His & Hers seats in the members bar at Leinster House?

HM: No, Jennifer has been fantastic. She ran as a councillor and she really did well. She did really very well in the general election. I think she’s fantastic. She’s a lot of experience. She worked with Frances Fitzgerald, she worked with Alan Shatter, she worked with Enda Kenny, she worked with Eoghan Murphy. She worked with a lot of people.

SS: She wrote a very learned book on the judiciary.

HM: Yeah. And she won the Basil Chub prize for the Basil Chubb prize for the best PhD in a year. She’s very capable and she’s doing very well.

And I’d always thought about public life at some stage. And now it’s just the right the right time, I think, because of my two passions at the moment. One is North-South relations, something I’ve been involved in for over 40 years. I’m involved with Co-operation Ireland and then involved with The Ireland Funds. And when the IRA blew up the Canary Wharf in 96, I organised with Trevor Ringland the Peace International, which brought the best players of in the world to Dublin to protest against violence. And we filled Lansdowne Road, as it was at the time, and the guests of honour were our children who’d been directly impacted by violence. A boy called Darren Baird, both his parents and sister were killed in the Shankill Road bombing. A little boy called Tommy Mullen, whose brother was killed in the reprisal attack in Greysteel soon after that. A little boy called Gareth Bolesworth, his best friend was Tim Parry, who was killed in an IRA bomb in Warrington. We’ve had some great days at Lansdowne Road. But that was definitely the most emotional in my life.

Those are my two passions. Northern Ireland, East-West relations one, and then the intellectual disabilities. I can do that in what I’m doing at the moment. But if I was in the Seanad, I would have a platform to give these topics much more consideration and publicity.

Hugo MacNeill

SS: You’re in Northern Ireland, most weeks I think?

HM: I’d go up a lot. And I chair the British Irish Association for the past number of years.

I wanted to spend more time doing that. And then I’ve also been very involved with the Trinity Centre, a wonderful initiative that came out of the Special Olympics, that Trinity College set up what’s now the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities, which take people who, a tiny percentage up to now, have gone to third level education and was always assumed that they couldn’t. That assumption was wrong. There’s a structured model now for taking in the students, doing a two-year course. And then the key is placing them with business partners. So, we’ve gone from a situation of three business partners a few years ago to 30. And now some of the companies you’ve talked about are involved. Smurfit Kappa, one of our partners that you mentioned recently, Microsoft have come on board. So, we’ve got 30.

And we’re only scratching the surface, because the potential for so many companies… I’d love every company of a certain size in Ireland to ask themselves the question, could you take on somebody with an intellectual disability? And the answer generally is yes. And aircraft leasing firms have been doing it. The accounting firms, the law firms. It’s a phenomenal project.

Those are my two passions. Northern Ireland, East-West relations one, and then the intellectual disabilities. I can do that in what I’m doing at the moment. But if I was in the Seanad, I would have a platform to give these topics much more consideration and publicity.

SS: Your wife, Jennifer, now with a high flying career, she took a career break to take care of your son James, didn’t she? That was something that didn’t surprise me, I’m sure she would.

But how did you two meet? Can I ask you that?

HM: We actually met at a lecture in UCD. I was chairman of the British Irish Association, so I was invited to a lecture that Professor Paul Bew, who was the then chairman, was giving in UCD on some aspects of British-Irish North-South policy. And I went to the lecture and I bumped into Jennifer at that time and she was working for Fine Gael. So that was how we first met. So, I was very lucky that I went to that lecture. And it’s been fantastic since.

SS: You’re 61 now?

HM: Yeah.

SS: There there’s a 22 year difference in your ages. What difference does that make?

HM: Absolutely nothing. It’s not made any difference at all really.

SS: Well, you’re wiser than you were I suppose 22 years ago.

HM: Yeah, but I still learn so much from her. She’s the smartest person I know. She’s the best communicator I know.

SS: Leaving Goldman Sachs and going to the Seanad, will that allow you to spend more time with your family?

HM: In the past few years, I’ve been working part-time with Goldman for the past three or four years. We’ve had a son who’s had some health issues. Nothing has come second to that.

SS: As a senator, of course, in the campaign, you’d be running against one of your past lecturers in Trinity, that’s David Norris. Do you know the other candidates are Ivana Bacik, Tom Clonan and Lynn Ruane?

HM: I’ve met them all. David was a teacher and was a phenomenal teacher. And I have a debt of gratitude because he made James Joyce so accessible and so much fun. And I really admire the work that Lynn Ruane is doing with the access program in Trinity, which is kind of similar in some ways to what we’re doing in the intellectual disabilities. And I met her the other day and we’re going to meet after the campaign to see the ways we could cooperate. Ivana Bacik and Tom Clonan I’ve just really met briefly.

SS: Are you confident of getting in?

HM: I think they’re very strong incumbents. I think it’s a situation which gives an advantage to the incumbents. And I think we’ve got three great incumbents at the moment. But look, you can either give it a shot or you can not. And so, I’d decided that I would give it a shot. It was time to move on and do something else anyway. We are even found, in the running so far in the publicity, that it’s given to the Centre for Intellectual Disabilities, that’s going to help us in our longer-term strategy there. We want to take this around the country. We want to take this beyond Trinity. And even if I don’t get elected, of the publicity around that has been great. I’m going to Belfast on Thursday and speaking with Ian Marshall in Queens about some of the issues on North-South stuff and trying to build relationships.

SS: It’s in your DNA, public service. I think you’ve got a famous cousin, not as I said earlier, My Perfect Cousin as the Undertones said, but Michael McDowell is a senator. Cousin of yours isn’t he?

HM: Yeah, absolutely. And I have huge affection and respect for Michael. And I think he’s a great thinker and has a great mind.

SS: Eoin MacNeill, He was our first Minister for Finance and up to his eyeballs in Easter, 1916. He was your grandfather?

HM: He was my great granduncle.

SS: Your great granduncle. And then there was a guy, I just read about it at the weekend, he was your namesake, Hugo MacNeill. He was the chief of staff of the army, I think?

HM: He was head of Eastern Command. He was a major general?

SS: He seemed like a scary sort of guy.

HM: He passed away when I was… I didn’t really know him. He died when I was four or five. So, I just remember visiting him sometimes, but not no real interaction with him.

SS: A lot of people assume, rightly or wrongly, that MacNeill’s traditionally would be the sort of people to send their children to Jesuit schools. You went to Blackrock?

HM: Yes. Actually, the reason why is it was it was closest. The reason was my dad was in Newbridge and my dad said he wanted to send me to Newbridge. And my mum said, ‘okay, that’s fine. But we will spend every Saturday and Sunday going to see Hugo down in Newbridge.’ And dad was a keen golfer. He didn’t go out much. He wouldn’t socialise much. But he loved his golf. And she said, ‘that’ll be the end of your golf, Hugh.’ And so he said, ‘oh, well, maybe we’ll find somewhere closer to home.’ And the closest to home was Blackrock. And it worked out very well for me since then.

SS: Blackrock, the rugby, of course, then Trinity. As the perfect boy, I suppose, you became an elected scholar there. What does that mean?

HM: It means that there’s a foundation scholarship. You do the exam at the end of your second year. And if you’re fortunate enough to be a scholar you are enabled to get your fees paid for a number of years, to actually live in college and to attend various other things.

SS: Worthwhile for family.

HM: Oh, it was fantastic. I worked very hard for it and I was delighted to get it. It was something I was very proud of.

SS: You were reportedly a member of the Knights of Campanile, am I saying it correctly?

HM: There’s a sort of a sports…

SS: They don’t have uniforms and horses?

HM: No, no, no. It is a group that gather and have a dinner every year. It’s nothing more than that. I played with the rugby club, I played with the soccer club, and different sports and was elected as a member.

One thing I’ll say is my decision, was respected by the IRFU even though it was at the end of my first season and I didn’t go. I went on to play for Ireland for a further seven seasons.

SS: Did you enjoy Oxford?

HM: Yeah, I loved Oxford. Oxford was fantastic. It was a small college. I was one of 30 different nationalities in that college. And I loved my time at Trinity and I loved the diversity. But Oxford was fantastic. So, I spent I spent about two and a half years there in Oxford. And it was it was great.

And I have friends there that are friends to this day. And I was at the 150th anniversary of the rugby club which was celebrated recently. So, it was great to see people that I knew from all over the world. Australia, New Zealand, all parts of the UK, Ireland as well. So, it was a great experience. And I learnt a lot from it.

SS: Oh, a great privilege, no doubt about that. To balance the books, we’ve been making you out here to be the class swat. But you were one of the three players to boycott Ireland’s tour of South Africa in 1981 to express your opposition to apartheid.

HM: Yeah, it was my first season playing for Ireland and the team was going to South Africa at the end of the year and it was a very divisive subject at the time. You know, a bit like the late latter-day Saipan. I just heard a lot of the black leaders from South Africa were saying, ‘please don’t come, and don’t play sport.’ That actually sort of persuaded me. I know there was a sort of an argument to try and keep politics out of sport, but it seemed to me that in South Africa, it was very much part of sport.

I think one of the things that also, Sam, you mentioned going to Blackrock. There’s been a lot of connections with Africa and Black Africa at the time. You know, the missions. But it was really more of just listening to a number of the black leaders at the time saying, please don’t come on tour. And at the end, I decided not to go. And I was privileged to meet President Mandela when he came to Dublin a few years later, and which was certainly one of the greatest highlights of my life.

One thing I’ll say is my decision, was respected by the IRFU even though it was at the end of my first season and I didn’t go. I went on to play for Ireland for a further seven seasons.

SS: There is redemption for bankers, after all. Anyway, we’ve run out of time. Thank you very much Hugo MacNeill for your company on my podcast with The Currency, and thank all of you who listened.

Hugo MacNeill is up against Lynn Ruane, Tom Clonan, Ivana Bacik and David Norris in a bid for the Seanad. Photo: Bryan Meade.

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