Tradition means a lot to vastly-experienced building contractor Kevin McCarthy, who has been delivering high-quality, durable and value-added agricultural buildings across West Cork and beyond for more than 50 years.
Hailing from Dunmanway in County Cork, Kevin McCarthy began working on farm buildings as a young man alongside his brothers in the early 1970s. Since establishing Kevin McCarthy Construction in 1980, he has become synonymous with the professional delivery of top-class agri buildings in the traditional and fiercely proud dairy hinterland of West Cork.
While Kevin McCarthy Construction has also over the decades completed a fantastic portfolio of commercial, domestic and industrial buildings, it is for consistently constructing best-in-class agricultural buildings for the farming fraternity of the Rebel County that he is most renowned.
Providing a complete turnkey service including groundworks, foundation and erection, Kevin McCarthy Construction boasts a stellar track record for promptly and efficiently delivering industry-leading agricultural works, including milking parlours, grain stores, housing units, sheds, tanks, walls, silage slabs, equestrian centres and any other addition a farmer might need to bolster his enterprise.
Kevin has been working on an array of projects in recent times – from roofing a recycling centre to cladding and insulating sports halls and constructing premium machinery sheds using insulated panels – but the volume of work he does for dairy farmers has slowed down, with no thanks to the pseudoscientific hysteria of the Green Party:
“Tanks have been quiet for a couple of years and there’s a lot less work with dairy farmers because their future has become a bit uncertain. I’d be very hard on the Greens because they are upsetting dairy farmers’ working patterns and also the price of concrete has gone sky high and again a lot of that is to do with the Greens. It’s a pity that there aren’t many tanks being done in West Cork now as they are a great job for me because you know exactly how long you are going to be inside them.
“You have to price every job and there is a lot of competition, and a lot of the older boys like myself are easing up a bit, but we are still here and still providing a good service. We did some very enjoyable work last year restoring a number of old hay barns that were done with timber trusses.
“I grew up with the timber set-up and when I started out with my brothers in ’73 we were familiar with timber trusses. Some of the steel companies were only starting the steel trusses around that time, but we were used to the old railway tracks and timber trusses. We are now restoring those hay barns – dry rot has set into the timber and they are falling down. We’ve also had a lot of high winds down here recently, which hasn’t helped either…”
Kevin has an inherent understanding of and passion for proven traditional building methods and is also extremely safety conscious when it comes to construction: “Health & Safety is huge and you have to prioritise it. We aren’t inclined to use ladders anymore, for example. We have cherry pickers, scissor hoists and teleporters with safety baskets to ensure that everybody is working in a safe environment.”
Kevin has taken on a large project working on a new asphalt plant for loyal customer McSweeney Bros. “They’re neighbours of ours and we’ve done plenty of work for them since the mid-‘90s. It’s close to home, which is always welcome. There’s a lot of work in the new asphalt plant, including retaining walls and concrete slabs – that’ll keep us going for five months.
“We’ll also tip away at some smaller jobs in the meantime. I’ve had some enquiries about tanks but everything started late this year and grass was scarce and it was not an ideal year at all. Skilled labour is scarce and expensive these days and because of my age and health I don’t do any physical work myself anymore, but I drive machines and am always out on site.
“I’ve a nice core of a few good men working with me and after that I bring in reliable subcontractors if we have concrete to pour or a big roof to put on.
They’re all good men and I’ve known them for years.”
Kevin McCarthy has an outstanding reputation for constructing new build homes but the Cork man is frustrated by some current building regulations, which are as illogical as they are counter-intuitive and uneconomical. “Regulations and specs have really changed in the last seven years with regard to domestic houses and of course you have to keep up to date with these changes.
“It’s all about insulation and ventilation these days and I don’t agree with it. There was a time years ago when a hen could walk into an old farmhouse under the door and now you wouldn’t get the blade of a knife under there. People are being conned up to their two eyeballs. Air-to-water systems, just to choose one of the fads, are a complete joke – they are incredibly expensive to install and then the gear becomes obsolete after seven or eight years.
“There have been a lot of changes in the farming sector, too, and many of them are for the good of the people of the world, but not all of them. Looking at the changes, I’d have to question some of the Teagasc boys. A farmer has to do his own thing and going to an adviser doesn’t make sense. Farmers have been at this for a long, long time – they already know what they are doing and they won’t get anything out of a book.
Contemplating the future of farming in general, and dairy farming in particular, the man behind Kevin McCarthy Construction believes most herd owners may opt to reduce their cattle numbers. “Most dairy men here have modernised and increased their herds, but some of them are scaling back again now. One man can comfortably operate 80-100 cows today, and many are finding that smaller is even better.
“We put in a 35-unit parlour for a client a few years ago and the quality of his life has improved dramatically since. He has more time to spend with his children and doing other things. Milk prices peaked in July 2022 and a lot of guys decided to expand but times are different now and they are struggling to get relief milkers.
“I work for lads who have 60-80 cows and others with herds of 250,” Kevin concludes. “The last couple of years have been tough, not least with the price of fertilizer – and there’s always somebody in the middle making a few pounds at the farmer’s expense. The lads with the smaller herds are better off over all. “They are happier at their work; they can go to GAA games if they want; they can socialise a bit more; they don’t have the same outlay as the man with the bigger herd, and they have their payments made. A lot of them have cut back and I’d expect more to do the same.”
Kevin McCarthy Construction,
Clounkerrigeen,
Ballinacurriga,
Dunmanway,
County Cork.
Tel: 086 2580629
Web: kevinmccarthyconstruction.com
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 12 No 3, September/October 2024
