Intro To The Business Awards

Miachael Twohig, Chairperson of IRD Duhallow

In an era where we are now learning to live with Covid, it is truly fantastic to see our business awards return once again to Duhallow. The board and I are delighted that we are now in a position to once again have face to face events.

This is the 8th year of our awards, and it is important now more than ever to showcase our local businesses and to celebrate those amongst us who excel at what they do. As you read this supplement, I have no doubt that you will be amazed at the level of innovation and ingenuity applied by these entrepreneurs and in particular, the resilience that they and their staff showed throughout the pandemic.

We are delighted to see such as huge level of entries for this year’s awards – we received over 90 nominations, the greatest number of nominations that we have had for any awards ceremony to date. Our judges have had no easy task to shortlist down to these 18 finalists, and I don’t envy the job facing them over the coming few days to select just one winner in each category.

Since its inception, supporting local businesses and employment has been a key priority for IRD Duhallow. We now offer a suite of supports for local businesses from capital grants through LEADER and SICAP, to the great upskilling and talent work being done by our Skillnet programme. However, networking events such as this are an extremely important part of what we do. We are delighted to this year have Marty Morrissey to be our Master of Ceremonies. I’ve no doubt that the Marty Party will be rocking in the James O’Keeffe Institute on the 18th of November, so get booking your tickets and I look forward to meeting you on the night.

Maura Walsh, CEO of IRD Duhallow

Maura Walsh, CEO of IRD Duhallow It gives me great pleasure to see the return of our annual business awards. The awards were a highlight on our calendar for many years, and they were sorely missed during the pandemic. I echo what Michael has said; I too don’t envy the task facing the judges to pick a winner. I want to sincerely thank Catherine Evans, Michael John Kearney, Shane McAuliffe and Kevin Sugrue for judging this year’s awards. We are fortunate to have such a high calibre panel of judges for the event.

I would like to sincerely thank the businesses who came on board as sponsors for this year’s awards ceremony: AIB, Bank of Ireland, Duhallow Skillnet, Kanturk Mart, Kanturk Printers, McCarthy Insurance Group, SE Systems, Hot Country Music and Music Row Studios.

I think it’s fair to say that the real prize for everyone is the publicity afforded to each of the shortlisted finalists, and the Discover Duhallow team and photographer Sheila Fitzgerald have put great work into putting together this wonderful supplement. We have also increased our social media presence and, with the support of Platinum Communications and Music Row Studios, we have worked hard to promote these awards and each of the finalists across digital channels.

The Awards ceremony and gala banquet dinner is set to take place on the 18th of November at 7pm and tickets are available on our website www.irdduhallow.com or by contacting our offices on 029- 60633.

Finally, to each of our very worthy finalists, I would like to say Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat!