As Ireland’s best known and most flamboyant businessman, Sir Tony O’Reilly, who has died aged 88, was instrumental in changing the image of his country from that of a commercial backwater into one of a booming “Celtic Tiger” economy. Never notably self-effacing, he once said: “The Irish in many countries concealed their identities. I got the Irish to be rather proud of the Irish.”
But the career of the titan who had once been Ireland’s richest man and a sporting hero ended in failure when, in a demonstration of hubristic over-reach, he was pursued through the courts for debts which, in spite of the sale of his houses and art collection, he was unable to pay, and he was declared bankrupt in 2015.
