Tipperary man honoured by Cork Chamber for 'exceptional' business career

A Clonmel man has been recognised by Cork Chamber for his outstanding contribution to business.

The award was presented to Pat McGrath at the Cork Chamber Dublin Dinner, where the keynote speaker was Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

The event, held at the Clayton Hotel Burlington Road and sponsored by EY, brought together 600 prominent figures from the political and business sectors.

Pat McGrath’s exceptional role at PM Group, the leading international engineering, architecture, project and construction management firm, played a significant part in his career.

PM Group has grown to employ 3,500 people across 20 offices globally.

Pat is son of the late Bridget (Delia) and Philip (Philly) McGrath from Cashel Road, Clonmel.

He attended school at Ss Peter and Paul’s and CBS High School. Having sat his Leaving Cert in 1965, he earned a scholarship to study electrical engineering at UCD, from where he qualified with Bachelor and Master’s degrees.

After working for a short period with a firm of engineering consultants in Detroit in the United States, he returned to Ireland and joined PM Group.

Pat was among the first half dozen employees hired by founders Jim Walsh and Brian Kearney in 1976.

He was appointed a director at 28 years of age and, with Joe Tuohy, he opened PM Group’s first Cork office in the late 1970s to service the Kinsale Head Gas Field project, and the then embryonic pharma industry in Ringaskiddy and Little Island.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, PM Group grew as the life sciences industry developed in Ireland.

In the early 2000s, after being appointed CEO, Pat developed and led PM Group’s strategy to transform the company from a primarily Ireland-only focus into an international engineering services firm focused on servicing multi-national companies in the life sciences, food, energy, data centre and advanced manufacturing sectors across the world.

This strategy has been accelerated by his successor Dave Murphy and today PM Group is one of the top international life sciences engineering and project management firms in the world.

Pat McGrath is an experienced chair of both statutory and advisory boards; an experienced non-executive director (NED) and board advisor, working with SMEs across a range of sectors.

He is a former member of the board of the Irish Management Institute (IMI), a former chair of the IMI’s Council and a former member of the IMI’s Audit and Risk Committee.

He was a member of the IMI Board that negotiated and approved the merger of IMI with UCC in 2016. He continues to be a member of the IMI’s Council.

He is a former Governor of Cork Institute of Technology, now Munster Technological University.

He was Chair of the CIT Board Development Committee that was responsible for major capital investments in CIT throughout the 90s.

Pat was the first Chairperson of the statutory Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), headquartered in Mahon, Cork, and established under the Irish Health Act 2007 – effectively to be the new Irish health regulator.

Prior to that, he chaired the non-statutory interim Authority (iHIQA) for two years.

As the first chairperson of the newly-established statutory authority, he oversaw the development of HIQA’s very first strategic plan in a very challenging environment in the Irish health sector at that time.

During 2014 and 2015, he was appointed Programme Manager of the George Boole Bicentenary Celebration by then President of UCC, Professor Michael Murphy. George Boole was appointed the first Professor of Mathematics in the then Queens University Cork in 1849, at the age of 34. Pat coordinated over 20 separate projects that celebrated his life.

He is currently a member of the Property Development Committee of the board of Cork Simon whose vision is: “A society without homelessness’” through the Housing First approach.

He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Questum Enterprise and Innovation Centre in his home town of Clonmel. Questum is a joint venture between Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) and Tipperary County Council.

Pat is a former Chair of the Advisory Board of Cork Innovates – an initiative of Cork City Council, Cork County Council and Cork Chamber to encourage start-up and scale-up companies in the Cork region.

Always passionate about continuing education and keeping the “saw sharp,” this year he completed a Diploma in ESG with The Corporate Governance Institute (CGI), Ireland.

Pat won a Tipperary County Minor Football Championship with Clonmel Commercials in 1965.

He admits that when he moved to Cork for six weeks in 1978, he never thought he would still be there 45 years later.

He is married to Clonmel woman Terri (née Corboy), who is originally from Davis Terrace, and the couple live in Monkstown, county Cork.