A distinguished academic, visionary boss of the Irish Management Institute (IMI), author and board member of some of Ireland's leading business organisations, Dr Ivor Kenny was a major figure in the world of Irish business for more than 50 years.
Described by Workers’ Party leader Tomás MacGiolla in the 1980s as, “the most dangerous man in Ireland”, a label Kenny found highly amusing, he was regarded by some as a champion of the right-wing establishment and a bête noire of the left.
His long-standing role as director general of the IMI provided a platform for his robust views which were informed not by class politics but by frustration at inefficiencies in the State’s management of the economy and business at the time.
He was sought out as a pundit on the budget each year – and he pulled no punches. It was a brave move given that the IMI was hugely dependent on State funding at that stage.
In the 1980s, he took issue with Garret Fitzgerald in a long piece in the Sunday Independent, after the then taoiseach had claimed his Coalition had turned the public finances around. Kenny pointed out that it had only slowed down the growth of the public debt.
It did not affect their lifelong friendship. FitzGerald and Kenny had formed a bond when they worked together in the Irish Management Institute in the 1960s, travelling throughout Ireland to inspire businesses to prepare for the challenge of accession to the EEC in 1973.
Born in Galway in 1930, Ivor Kenny was the only child of Tom Kenny and Julia McGuinness. His father's first wife, Catherine Hunt, had died and Ivor had six half brothers and sisters: Peggy, May, Jack, Des, Kitty and Joan. Tom "Cork" Kenny, as his father was known, was the founding editor of the Connaught Tribune newspaper in 1909 and was a colourful and pioneering figure in provincial newspaper publishing in Ireland in the early decades of the 20th century.
After attending St Ignatius College, Kenny undertook a BA degree in UCG and later graduated from the London School of Economics, the Institute d’Études Politiques, Paris and Harvard Business School as a Fulbright scholar. He secured his first job in 1955 as an announcer at Radio Éireann from where he joined the IMI in 1959, becoming director general in 1963.
Under his strong leadership, the IMI developed a suite of both short and long-term management education programmes, its faculty expanded and it formed links and partnerships with both Irish and overseas third-level institutions. Kenny oversaw the ambitious building of a purpose-built campus in Sandyford which opened in 1974.
In its heyday in the 1970s, the IMI was not merely a provider of management training courses but was an influential business think tank. It developed a regional membership structure throughout the country, established a monthly magazine called Management and hosted a major national management conference in Killarney which became a highlight of the business calendar each spring.
When he left the IMI in 1983, Kenny became a senior research fellow at UCD, undertook consulting projects and began a series of books, ultimately writing 13 titles. His first, Government and Enterprise in Ireland (1984), was characteristically forthright in its views and formed the basis of an entire Late Late Show. The programme was the subject of a complaint to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission which upheld the view that "Gay Byrne had clearly aligned himself with the views of three members of the panel – Ivor Kenny, Des Peelo and Tom Murphy".
Kenny mellowed with the years and observed with satisfaction the increasing professionalisation of Irish business with the creation of a cache of large globally focused businesses, some of whose stories he would tell in his books. He enjoyed unprecedented access to a generation of chief executives, many of whom were suspicious of business journalists at the time and he found a niche and a writing style that worked in books such as In Good Company, Conversations with Irish Leaders (1987).
Long reflective interviews with organisational leaders were taped, transcribed and distilled into an autobiographical style narrative agreed with the subject. Comforted by advance sight of the interviews and the sense that he was “one of their own”, subjects sometimes dropped their guard but rarely requested that changes be made.
A talented writer with an assured style and gift for making complex ideas accessible, he was also a stickler for fine detail and he had no hesitation in stopping the press in the printing of one of his books if he found the slightest error in punctuation on a proof.
He served on the boards of several large companies including Kerry Group and Iona Technologies and his roles as chairman of Smurfit Paribas Bank and as a long standing director of Independent News & Media, brought him into regular contact with Dr Michael Smurfit and Dr Tony O’ Reilly, two of the great titans of business of his generation.
He had a strong religious faith and his work on behalf of the Catholic Church was rewarded by the honour of being made a Knight of St Gregory. Convivial in company, he was a keen oarsman, with a lifetime interest in rowing. He travelled extensively.
Ivor Kenny is survived by his wife Maureen (nee MacMahon) and his children: Dermot, Conor, Ivor, Helen and Mark.