As a young mother of three trying to save the family farm in the 1980s, Eilis Quinlan admits that qualifying as an accountant was the last thing on her mind the day she first bought a textbook to try to get to grips with their floundering finances.
“I couldn’t understand the foreword of it,” she recalls. “I just remember being totally overwhelmed and wondering what to do.”
Yet that was the start of a journey that this May, saw Eilis named as Accountant of the Year by the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (ACCA), after her Naas-based practice, Quinlan & Co, won Small Practice of the Year at the Irish Accountancy Awards just the week before.
Though it does not take long to realise that reinvention runs in the blood of the woman whose earliest memories are of growing up on a sheep farm in Tallaght, before her parents diversified into dairying.
After all, her father, the late Justin Keating, was not only a veterinary surgeon and a university lecturer; he was also head of agricultural programming for RTÉ during the 1960s – perhaps most famously for Telefís Feirme – and a Labour TD twice elected to Dáil Éireann, serving in Liam Cosgrave’s cabinet as Minister for Industry and Commerce in the 1970s. Meanwhile, her mother Loretta was a professional concert pianist.
“As small kids, I remember her practising Chopin, Shubert,” says Eilis. “So we had that as well as the sheep.”
Though she says that the greatest lesson she learned from her parents was that a person did not have to choose “a career for life”, but could change and evolve depending on circumstances.
“They were very ‘blue sky’,” she recalls, explaining that while she originally planned to follow in her father’s footsteps by studying veterinary – even repeating the Leaving Cert to get a place – she decided eventually to concentrate on the cello after she started earning money playing professionally, while show jumping at the weekend.
“Which is where I met Paddy,” she says of Paddy Quinlan – the first professional showjumper to be employed by the State – who she met at 18 and married at 19, with the first of their three children arriving when she was 21.
From farming to accounting
It was around this time that the young family relocated to a 400-acre farm in Moyvalley in Co Kildare, which Eilis describes wryly as the “beginning of the end”. While the main attraction had been the milk quota, it was predominantly a tillage farm, in which they had no experience.
Instead, they concentrated on building up their dairy herd, but it was the 1980s and “with interest rates of over 20%, it was just totally unsustainable”.
Accountant Eilis Quinlan with her grandson Tomas. \ Carol Dunne
Though perhaps it was really the beginning of something new, as it was this crisis that had propelled Eilis to buy the accountancy book to try to get a greater handle on their finances.
Soon realising that she needed more guidance, however, she signed up for an accountancy course in Rathmines College of Commerce, driving up to Dublin three nights a week while Paddy would put the kids to bed.
“I signed up for the first year thinking, ‘I’ll get a handle on this and that will be it’,” she recalls, explaining that she never saw herself qualifying as an accountant.
“I thought that was way out of my league and an impossible commitment when the kids were small.”
Within months, however, she was on a new career path and continued her studies to qualify eventually as an accountant, auditor and tax specialist. She also put her new skills into practice, restructuring loans and down-sizing to a new farm half the acreage in Ballymore Eustace, Co Kildare, where they concentrated again on the dairy herd, as well as Paddy’s horses.
As a young mother of three trying to save the family farm in the 1980s, Eilis Quinlan admits that qualifying as an accountant was the last thing on her mind the day she first bought a text book to try to get to grips with their floundering finances.. \ Carol Dunne
But not long after getting “back on track”, they received another blow when brucellosis struck the farm in the early 90s. While “devastating” at the time, looking back now, Eilis has a different take on the tragedy that forced their family to take a huge leap of faith.
“In retrospect, it was probably the luckiest day of our lives because we knew looking back we never would have given up the cows because the security of the milk cheque and we had been so broke for so long that we were terrified of any instability,” she says, explaining that as the Government compensation was only about a third of the value of the herd, they decided not to reinstate it.
Instead, Paddy decided to concentrate solely on horses, focusing on producing top-quality showjumpers and training riders, while Eilis invested all her energy into her own practice, which she had set up in Naas on a shoestring.
“Ignorance is bliss,” she laughs. “I hired a room and stuck up a plaque on the main street – literally – opened a new bank account and my friend designed some headed paper for me and off I went.”
Farms as SMES
She says she got a lucky break when the Government announced a tax amnesty that brought a lot of people into the tax net for the first time.
“I was a sole trader, cheap because I didn’t even know how to price properly and I got a lot of clients then that way that stayed with me,” she says; but from those humble beginnings, the practice has evolved to employ eight staff today.
This May saw Eilis named as “Accountant of the Year” by the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (ACCA), after her Naas-based practice, Quinlan & Co, won “Small Practice of the Year” at the Irish Accountancy Awards \ Carol Dunne
Offering a full portfolio of accounting and tax planning services, Eilis’s customers range from those in the horse industry to Brexit clients looking to set up a subsidiary in Ireland. However, her real passion is helping small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to grow.
“Looking forward, having targets, having a vision, making that achievable, achieving the small steps to begin with – that is so satisfying,” she says.
Given changes to the traditional model of agriculture, Eilis feels that many farms are SMEs in their own right, especially those that have diversified. She especially enjoys family succession planning and offering guidance on accessing competitive finance; though for day-to-day efficiency, she says that even small things like keeping your tax deductible receipts in order can make a big difference to your bottom line.
“If you park and go into a meeting and your parking ticket is €8 and you stick it in the dashboard or your glove compartment or whatever, the chances are you’ll lose the value of your €8 for tax purposes,” she says.
“That breaks my heart because God knows, people work hard enough. At least claim what you’re entitled to. And just on that, there’s an awful lot of income tax deductions every year that aren’t claimed and that’s really where my motto grew from: it’s not how much you make that really matters, it’s how much of that you keep.”
To this end, Eilis has had a free “Quinlan & Co” app developed with everything from tips on tax deadlines to a mileage tracker, which she feels would be beneficial to farmers on the move.
It’s just one example of how she continues to innovate; she is currently investing in technology to allow staff to work more flexibly.
“All the stats show that productivity increases if anything when people are happy and when they are committed,” she reasons. Eilis’s office is also an ACCA gold-approved training practice, offering students a study package with college, membership and exam fees, as well as paid study leave.
And given her own background, it’s not surprising that she looks for recruits with a can-do attitude over a ream of qualifications.
“You could have all the qualifications in the world, but that’s theory,” she says, matter-of-fact. “The reality is you get a black sack of stuff coming in with dung and cigarette smoke and whatever all over it and you have to get down on your knees and sort it and get on with it.”
Eilis with her husband Paddy. \ Carol Dunne
Outside of her own business, Eilis’s roles range from sitting on the board of the State-owned Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (a strategic SME funding company delivering lower cost, long-term, innovative and accessible funding) to being a director of Ballet Ireland.
She is also involved behind the scenes with the horses with Paddy, though she no longer rides herself after breaking her back a number of years ago.
“But I’ll do everything else; I’ll roll the bandages and load them and clean the tack,” she laughs.
The next generation are also involved: daughter Wendy and her husband Alejo run a polo school on the farm, and daughter Danielle is a chef and also Paddy’s right hand woman. Meanwhile, their son Jonathan is an assistant director and has worked on series like Games of Thrones.
And Eilis is counting – or accounting – her blessings.
“I’m so lucky to be working at something I love,” she concludes.
Visit www.quinlanaccountants.ie
Take five with Eilis QuinlanHobbies: hanging out with family, going to the theatre, polo matches or horse shows, supper with friends and reading thrillers. Favourite music to listen to while driving: British cellist Jacqueline du Pré, Leonard Cohen and Rod Stewart. Signature dish: pork steak saltimbocca; a pork steak pounded out thinly, wrapped in Parma ham and sage and baked with Calvados and butter. Holiday destination: Italy or France. Interesting facts: Eilis’s grandfather was the renowned Irish artist Sean Keating. He was actually working on a portrait of her as a wedding present the week that he died. She is also a member of Mensa, having taken the test as a teenager as a bet. Read more
Birds of a feather together at Butler's Organic Eggs
'There was no such thing that you can’t do something because you’ve a pony tail'
As a young mother of three trying to save the family farm in the 1980s, Eilis Quinlan admits that qualifying as an accountant was the last thing on her mind the day she first bought a textbook to try to get to grips with their floundering finances.
“I couldn’t understand the foreword of it,” she recalls. “I just remember being totally overwhelmed and wondering what to do.”
Yet that was the start of a journey that this May, saw Eilis named as Accountant of the Year by the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (ACCA), after her Naas-based practice, Quinlan & Co, won Small Practice of the Year at the Irish Accountancy Awards just the week before.
Though it does not take long to realise that reinvention runs in the blood of the woman whose earliest memories are of growing up on a sheep farm in Tallaght, before her parents diversified into dairying.
After all, her father, the late Justin Keating, was not only a veterinary surgeon and a university lecturer; he was also head of agricultural programming for RTÉ during the 1960s – perhaps most famously for Telefís Feirme – and a Labour TD twice elected to Dáil Éireann, serving in Liam Cosgrave’s cabinet as Minister for Industry and Commerce in the 1970s. Meanwhile, her mother Loretta was a professional concert pianist.
“As small kids, I remember her practising Chopin, Shubert,” says Eilis. “So we had that as well as the sheep.”
Though she says that the greatest lesson she learned from her parents was that a person did not have to choose “a career for life”, but could change and evolve depending on circumstances.
“They were very ‘blue sky’,” she recalls, explaining that while she originally planned to follow in her father’s footsteps by studying veterinary – even repeating the Leaving Cert to get a place – she decided eventually to concentrate on the cello after she started earning money playing professionally, while show jumping at the weekend.
“Which is where I met Paddy,” she says of Paddy Quinlan – the first professional showjumper to be employed by the State – who she met at 18 and married at 19, with the first of their three children arriving when she was 21.
From farming to accounting
It was around this time that the young family relocated to a 400-acre farm in Moyvalley in Co Kildare, which Eilis describes wryly as the “beginning of the end”. While the main attraction had been the milk quota, it was predominantly a tillage farm, in which they had no experience.
Instead, they concentrated on building up their dairy herd, but it was the 1980s and “with interest rates of over 20%, it was just totally unsustainable”.
Accountant Eilis Quinlan with her grandson Tomas. \ Carol Dunne
Though perhaps it was really the beginning of something new, as it was this crisis that had propelled Eilis to buy the accountancy book to try to get a greater handle on their finances.
Soon realising that she needed more guidance, however, she signed up for an accountancy course in Rathmines College of Commerce, driving up to Dublin three nights a week while Paddy would put the kids to bed.
“I signed up for the first year thinking, ‘I’ll get a handle on this and that will be it’,” she recalls, explaining that she never saw herself qualifying as an accountant.
“I thought that was way out of my league and an impossible commitment when the kids were small.”
Within months, however, she was on a new career path and continued her studies to qualify eventually as an accountant, auditor and tax specialist. She also put her new skills into practice, restructuring loans and down-sizing to a new farm half the acreage in Ballymore Eustace, Co Kildare, where they concentrated again on the dairy herd, as well as Paddy’s horses.
As a young mother of three trying to save the family farm in the 1980s, Eilis Quinlan admits that qualifying as an accountant was the last thing on her mind the day she first bought a text book to try to get to grips with their floundering finances.. \ Carol Dunne
But not long after getting “back on track”, they received another blow when brucellosis struck the farm in the early 90s. While “devastating” at the time, looking back now, Eilis has a different take on the tragedy that forced their family to take a huge leap of faith.
“In retrospect, it was probably the luckiest day of our lives because we knew looking back we never would have given up the cows because the security of the milk cheque and we had been so broke for so long that we were terrified of any instability,” she says, explaining that as the Government compensation was only about a third of the value of the herd, they decided not to reinstate it.
Instead, Paddy decided to concentrate solely on horses, focusing on producing top-quality showjumpers and training riders, while Eilis invested all her energy into her own practice, which she had set up in Naas on a shoestring.
“Ignorance is bliss,” she laughs. “I hired a room and stuck up a plaque on the main street – literally – opened a new bank account and my friend designed some headed paper for me and off I went.”
Farms as SMES
She says she got a lucky break when the Government announced a tax amnesty that brought a lot of people into the tax net for the first time.
“I was a sole trader, cheap because I didn’t even know how to price properly and I got a lot of clients then that way that stayed with me,” she says; but from those humble beginnings, the practice has evolved to employ eight staff today.
This May saw Eilis named as “Accountant of the Year” by the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (ACCA), after her Naas-based practice, Quinlan & Co, won “Small Practice of the Year” at the Irish Accountancy Awards \ Carol Dunne
Offering a full portfolio of accounting and tax planning services, Eilis’s customers range from those in the horse industry to Brexit clients looking to set up a subsidiary in Ireland. However, her real passion is helping small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to grow.
“Looking forward, having targets, having a vision, making that achievable, achieving the small steps to begin with – that is so satisfying,” she says.
Given changes to the traditional model of agriculture, Eilis feels that many farms are SMEs in their own right, especially those that have diversified. She especially enjoys family succession planning and offering guidance on accessing competitive finance; though for day-to-day efficiency, she says that even small things like keeping your tax deductible receipts in order can make a big difference to your bottom line.
“If you park and go into a meeting and your parking ticket is €8 and you stick it in the dashboard or your glove compartment or whatever, the chances are you’ll lose the value of your €8 for tax purposes,” she says.
“That breaks my heart because God knows, people work hard enough. At least claim what you’re entitled to. And just on that, there’s an awful lot of income tax deductions every year that aren’t claimed and that’s really where my motto grew from: it’s not how much you make that really matters, it’s how much of that you keep.”
To this end, Eilis has had a free “Quinlan & Co” app developed with everything from tips on tax deadlines to a mileage tracker, which she feels would be beneficial to farmers on the move.
It’s just one example of how she continues to innovate; she is currently investing in technology to allow staff to work more flexibly.
“All the stats show that productivity increases if anything when people are happy and when they are committed,” she reasons. Eilis’s office is also an ACCA gold-approved training practice, offering students a study package with college, membership and exam fees, as well as paid study leave.
And given her own background, it’s not surprising that she looks for recruits with a can-do attitude over a ream of qualifications.
“You could have all the qualifications in the world, but that’s theory,” she says, matter-of-fact. “The reality is you get a black sack of stuff coming in with dung and cigarette smoke and whatever all over it and you have to get down on your knees and sort it and get on with it.”
Eilis with her husband Paddy. \ Carol Dunne
Outside of her own business, Eilis’s roles range from sitting on the board of the State-owned Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (a strategic SME funding company delivering lower cost, long-term, innovative and accessible funding) to being a director of Ballet Ireland.
She is also involved behind the scenes with the horses with Paddy, though she no longer rides herself after breaking her back a number of years ago.
“But I’ll do everything else; I’ll roll the bandages and load them and clean the tack,” she laughs.
The next generation are also involved: daughter Wendy and her husband Alejo run a polo school on the farm, and daughter Danielle is a chef and also Paddy’s right hand woman. Meanwhile, their son Jonathan is an assistant director and has worked on series like Games of Thrones.
And Eilis is counting – or accounting – her blessings.
“I’m so lucky to be working at something I love,” she concludes.
Visit www.quinlanaccountants.ie
Take five with Eilis QuinlanHobbies: hanging out with family, going to the theatre, polo matches or horse shows, supper with friends and reading thrillers. Favourite music to listen to while driving: British cellist Jacqueline du Pré, Leonard Cohen and Rod Stewart. Signature dish: pork steak saltimbocca; a pork steak pounded out thinly, wrapped in Parma ham and sage and baked with Calvados and butter. Holiday destination: Italy or France. Interesting facts: Eilis’s grandfather was the renowned Irish artist Sean Keating. He was actually working on a portrait of her as a wedding present the week that he died. She is also a member of Mensa, having taken the test as a teenager as a bet. Read more
Birds of a feather together at Butler's Organic Eggs
'There was no such thing that you can’t do something because you’ve a pony tail'
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