In 2008, the accountancy firm KPMG published a book called That’ll Never Work… profiling entrepreneurs who had built their businesses from scratch as well as family members who had inherited and scaled established companies. The book was published in a different time, before the crash decimated the Irish economy. Indeed, the foreword was written by the late Sean FitzPatrick, then chairman of Anglo Irish Bank. Many of the businesses featured failed during the financial crisis. Celtic Bookmakers, led by Ivan Yates, collapsed into insolvency, as did vast portions of the Treasury Holdings property empire. Aer Arann, founded by Padraig O’Ceidigh,…

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