Business & Finance was founded in 1964 and this year marks our 60th anniversary. To celebrate this extraordinary milestone, we are running a series of Leadership interviews with business leaders who are creating lasting legacies across the corporate landscape of Ireland. Serial entrepreneur, Cathal Friel, speaks with Sarah Freeman about resilience, hunger and the housing crisis.
I met Cathal Friel just weeks before news of his €7.3 million sale of shares in hVivo went public. The businessman, who turns 60 this year, is synonymous with successful entrepreneurship. Co-founder of hVIVO (formerly Open Orphan Plc) and Poolbeg Pharma, co-founder & Director of European Green Transition, co-founder of Amryt Pharma Plc and founder and managing director of Raglan Capital, where he spent 17 years, his credentials speak for themselves.
Friel joins me on a video call from the coastal Donegal holiday home he has rented for years.
“My sister has rented one just a few doors down,” he says, “we’re trying to recreate our childhood.”
“It’s a mother-free zone here,” he adds, explaining that his wife takes the time to visit her own parents and the days are spent with his children, his sister’s family and visiting ‘stray Dads’.
Friel grew up in Donegal, the middle son of 10 children and, due to his father’s illness, was compelled to leave school at the age of 16 and take over the family business.
Having been struck by Friel’s story since I first heard it, I was interested in knowing whether the kind of hard graft and work ethic he has displayed throughout his life, particularly in his early years, can be taught.
“Good question because I’ve got a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old upstairs, sound asleep, and a 16-year-old back in Dublin, all who won’t move until 11am! But honestly, I think it’s experiential, you live it. People are hungrier than not and hunger is great.”
Friel knows about hunger. He has spoken in the past about the upset he felt on having to leave school prematurely, and how he went on to put himself through college at night and subsequently earn an MBA in International Marketing from Ulster University.
He still has that work ethic. Taking three weeks off this summer for the first time, he can’t resist putting in a few hours of work, daily, before the teenagers rise. He also believes that comfortable living can result in a subdued sense of drive.
“Just thinking about my own kids, living comfortably in south county Dublin. Whereas, if you come from a foreign country from which you’ve uprooted yourself, a drive and ambition can kick in.”
It possibly helps that Friel lists business as one of his hobbies and he clearly thrives on the cut and thrust of his various roles and responsibilities.
“It’s good fun to be honest with you. I did go through a brief period where I considered dialling it down to a few days a week but as I wandered around Monkstown, I wondered what I would do during the days and I realised I’d be bored out of my mind.”
Friel believes that difficult times test our mettle for better and hone resilience.
With the TikTok generation, they’re reading news as 12 and 13 year olds that we wouldn’t have been bothered with at their age.
“You learn it by going through tough times. I don’t underestimate the younger generation though. They might be surprisingly resilient. When I grew up, there was a clearer path; go to school, go to university, get a good job. With the TikTok generation, they’re reading news as 12 and 13 year olds that we wouldn’t have been bothered with at their age. They’re concerned about Ukraine, the environment, about Trump and being exposed to all that nervous tension is building their resilience.”
He adds, “Every generation thinks the next generation has it easier than them and I’m sure that goes back as far as the caveman. Humans have an inbuilt adaptability and people learn resilience.”
Friel credits Ireland’s economic resiliency to the bankruptcy of the 2007/2008.
Everyone from the Taoiseach to taxi drivers thought money grew on trees.
“Ireland is a really lucky place in the world. The only time in my life I felt comparatively poor was 2004/2005 when everyone around me was buying places in Portugal, big cars etc. Then 2007 hit and I realised, hold on, that’s all debt, all borrowing.”
“It taught Ireland, still a young nation, not to lose the run of ourselves. Everyone from the Taoiseach to taxi drivers thought money grew on trees. So that major trauma made the country stronger. Everyone learnt that we had to tighten our belts.”
Ireland is doing comparatively well in terms of entrepreneurship, according to Friel. He notes that some countries like the U.K. struggle with it because of their large industrial base and generations who worked in those, then-secure, industries like steel and auto manufacturing.
Farmers are the oldest entrepreneurs.
“Here, there is a drive and a hunger and it comes from the farming community. Farmers are the oldest entrepreneurs. They’ve got to decide, at the beginning of the year, what they’re setting and what they’re growing. They have to guess other factors like prices and not least the weather.”
Housing crisis
“The biggest problem here”, says Friel, “and it’s the same all over Europe but it’s particularly bad here, is the housing problem.” He notes that small houses, like the one he is currently renting in Donegal, are changing hands for upwards of 1 million euro. He hopes that the new government will solve the housing crisis.
“If they don’t, Ireland will have serious trouble. If they can fix it, Ireland would lead Europe for quality of life and jobs – everything is here. Part of the reason is that post-Brexit, many multinationals need to have a base in Europe and we’re an English speaking country.”
Friel draws a comparison to Breda, a city in the Netherlands where the housing limit is approximately three times the height of Ireland and which, he says, doesn’t feel in any way built up. He opines that a serious overhaul of planning and construction regulations is needed and outlines a three step approach that policy makers need to make.
“As a step one, I would double the housing height limit here. So for example, in rural Ireland, the limit is two stories. I would double it to four. In the city, it’s generally 4 or 5 stories, instead, just double it.”
It’s been done before, he says.
“The last big housing crisis was back in the 40s when you had slums all over the country and the fairly enlightened government at the time doubled the housing stock between 1950 and 1958. Entire parts of Rialto and Kimmage were built in the 50s. It needs to be a government-centric diktat.”
So you’d pay to play, just as in business.
Friel then outlines step 2 which is to stamp out the serial planning objectors.
“There are too many people sitting at home with too much time and they are serial objectors. I think everyone should have the right to object to a planning application during the first few weeks. Beyond that though, you should have to pay for any objection. So there would be consequences. So you’d pay to play, just as in business.”
Step 3, says Friel, is crucial in terms of dramatically improving the housing gridlock.
“We need to ban judicial reviews of planning, this is the critical one. It’s idiotic that the government allows this. We have the planning process, we have the appeal system, then we have An Bord Pleanala and you can then do a judicial review. It delays things another couple of years as it goes through the courts.”
Friel wonders why the green space in Ireland, particularly in rural areas, is not utilised.
“In the Netherlands, they have satellite towns everywhere. Why not build a whole series of satellite towns off the motorways here,” he asks.
Friel advocates we take inspiration from how that country has achieved certain civic goals like housing for its populace.
“It’s a country the size of Munster with a population of 17.5 million people. It’s one of the world’s leading agricultural exporters. We have slightly more cows but they have three times as many pigs, five times as many chickens and they still have green fields. Imagine us trying to fit the whole country into Munster. But when you drive around, there is no feeling of being squashed or huge towering blocks. It comes back to the solution of satellite towns. Having a dozen of them built all around the M50 with lovely town centres etc.”
What the future holds
He concedes that while he has views on policy, he has no ambition towards a life in politics.
“In business, you need a certain leadership style and resilience. In politics you require different skills and while I’m not sure what they are, I know I don’t have them.”
Asked if he is still creating and looking for ideas for new ventures, Friel says he never stops analysing the market.
“I spend a day or two in London every week, that’s where the investors are. If you want to raise 10, 15, 20 million, that’s where you can do it. I spend a good bit of time looking around, looking at trends and where the money is going. It’s not always a great lightbulb idea, most ideas come from where money flows in certain sectors. The biggest companies in the world copied somebody else, it’s all about being fast followers.”
Cathal Friel was Business Person of the Month December 2023. Please see here for more information on the upcoming Business & Finance Awards.