More than bricks and mortar!!!

2 December 2009

In the current climate, where the critics are practically lining up to have a go at property developers and all things that rhyme with ‘building’, the unheard of happens. McInerney Homes receives an unsolicited invitation to celebrate the 60 year anniversary of Gilroy Avenue a small community located in Edenderry, County Offaly.

The Gilroy Avenue Residents Committee extended this invite because to this day, generations of families who live in these houses still appreciate the level of craftsmanship and high building standard of their homes. As one of the oldest original tenants, Mrs Catherine Quinlan now in her eighty sixth year, succinctly put it, ‘that’s when houses were built like houses were meant to be built’. There was no plamás or playing to the gallery in her voice – she was simply calling it as she saw it. How gratifying and indeed humbling it is for McInerney Homes to be associated with this unique event and proves beyond all doubt that Quality survives. And also how ironic that this event coincides with the 100 year centenary celebrations in which the company prides itself on its longevity and resilience.

This group of 60 houses was built in 1949 for a contract value of £ 98,000 with Dan McInerney himself in the role of General Foreman time. As Rosemarie Hennebry, Sales and Marketing Director eloquently put it in her address to the assembled residents ‘we may have supplied the bricks and mortar but it was you who built a thriving and close-knit community that judging by the wonderful atmosphere in this room today is more like a huge family’.

As one walks down the street, that is Gilroy Street; one can’t but be gob-smacked by the brightly painted, well kept houses and gardens. Graffiti and litter is non-existent of and everything looks so neat and tidy. The sense of pride and community is palpable without it being boastful or rude. What is also uniquely different here is that these homes did not get sucked into the Celtic Tiger cauldron of pricing and buying and selling as most of the houses with the odd exception have been handed down from generation to generation like valuable heirlooms that couldn’t be let leave the family.

As Rosemarie mingled amongst the crowd, she was regaled by tales of romance and childhood innocence from the lady who told of how her aunty met her builder husband during that hot 1950 summer and another scéal from Brendan Mc Donnell of skating in his father’s hob-nailed boots on the iced concrete roads – playstation, how are ya!!. Towards the end of the mass, a rendition of the ‘town I have loved so well’ shook the rafters as all in sundry joined in to bellow out what seemed like their own anthem. In a world gone mad, here was a strong and proud community at peace with itself.