Pat Beirne recently announced his retirement as CEO of Mergon having built the company from its foundations in Castlepollard in 1981 to a global brand with multiple bases across the world. The Athlone man started with 9 employees and the enterprise now has over 1,100 staff worldwide. The world is a completely different place to what it was when Pat set up Mergon.
“In Ireland 42 years ago, there were no motorways,” he told Topic. “There was no internet. You were lucky enough to have a phone line. Communication was very difficult.