Former Staff Members

The 'Three Wise Men' Jackie Moriarty, Former Head Waiter. Tom Doyle, Former Head Porter & Sonny Looney, Former Head Barman.

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The Hall Porter and former head barman Sonny Looney started working at the Parknasilla in 1959. This was the same year the Kenmare branch railway closed – so ended Parknasilla’s association with railways. In 1961 Prince Rainer and Princess Grace of Monaco and their children stayed in the hotel. ‘They didn’t drink in the bar’ recalls Looney, who was still only a raw recruit at the time, ‘but I did get to meet her and I did get to serve her. I served her drinks in their room.’ The royal guests used to frequent the hotel’s restaurant for dinner in the evening. The hotel was awash with security. There had been a threat of kidnapping elsewhere in Europe.

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The former Head Hall Porter, Tom Doyle, started in Parknasilla in 1951.

He remembers that Parknasilla was “the” hotel in Ireland and almost eighty percent of the guests were English. Throughout the 50s and 60s, the highlight of his day was to stand behind the porters desk in the evening and watch the couples coming down the stairs for dinner in evening wear. ‘If you saw somebody coming down that time in his Sunday suit you’d say ‘Christ, where did he come from?’, Doyle recalls ‘it was always full evening wear.’