From Today’s Irish Times: Donagh O’Sullivan, from Cullen, near Millstreet, has worked for more than 20 years in Britain – but he is coming home in September to get married.
The September 8th nuptials mark a homecoming of sorts, too, for his bride-to-be, Francesca Fenaroli, even though she had never heard of Millstreet until she met the Cork man in London three years ago.
“We had been dating for about a year when she showed me her family tree in her mother’s house. Her mother’s maiden name was O’Connor,” he says. A quick examination revealed the Millstreet connection.
Fenaroli’s great-great grandfather, John O’Connor, had married in 1872 in the same church in Millstreet that will be used by O’Sullivan and Fenaroli.
“They had known he [O’Connor] was from Cork, but not that he was from Millstreet. This story is more interesting than mine,” he says with a laugh as he sits in an office in Westminster.
The fourth of seven sons, O’Sullivan is today managing director of Galliard Homes, one of the biggest builders of apartments and town-houses in London.
After taking a civil engineering degree in UCC, O’Sullivan left for London in September 1990 with a job offer from the UK contractor, Balfour Beatty. The following two years were spent working for its foundations arm, before O’Sullivan chopped and changed jobs “chasing a bit more money”.
In 1997, he left Cambridgeshire for London, believing he needed to be in the capital. There, he joined Mansell Construction Services. His first job was as project manager on a Galliard development.
Once it was completed, Galliard came with a proposition, asking him to run its then small building department, which at the time completed fewer than 100 units a year.
… read the full article in the finance section of today’s Irish Times (8th June 2012)
