Dermot Madigan

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When hotels are run the way they should be run, they are amongst the most sublime things on earth, an entertainment beyond price. To run them that way is one of the most difficult tasks known to man. But some guys can manage that feat, that all-singing, all-dancing, all-juggling hoopla.

Dermot Madigan is one of those guys. You can see him do his thing at Mayo's Mulranny Park Hotel, at the edge of Mayo on the cusp of Achill, where he has been working since 2009. He doesn't just take care of everything, what he does is to take care of everyone. He knows that customers can only be looked after when the staff are looked after, so he is ultra-generous to his crew – Helen who bakes the bread; Sean who makes the breakfast sausages; Ollie and his team in the kitchen. The result is that his team over-deliver.

But he can see the picture outside of the hotel, also, and with both the Great Western Greenway and, now, the Gourmet Greenway, Mr Madigan's hotel is racing out to the elements of Mayo, and to the artisans of Mayo. He is placing the hotel at the centre of its world.

Seeing the big picture may be due in part to working with Chuck Feeney for the best part of two decades in various parts of the world, after he had graduated from Galway RTC. For Mr Madigan is one of that distinguished troupe who turned the Castletroy Park Hotel in Limerick into a beacon of good things when it first opened. The Castletroy, like the Mulranny, knew that God is in the detail: the brown bread; the cup of hot chocolate for the kids; the chowder; the freshness of the scallop; the foresight to attend to every detail. It's hard work, it takes long hours, and the ringmaster can never relax. But it's addictive, and there is no challenge to equal it. Dermot Madigan knows that.

Mulranny Park Hotel, Mulranny, County Mayo
098 36 000