How solar panels helped Loughrea Golf Club

Loughrea Golf Club was struggling financially with too few members when, in the same month in 2017, three senior members of staff died unexpectedly. The club survived and, thanks to a mixture of an influx of new members in 2020 and cost-saving measures such as the installation of solar panels, it is now thriving, writes Daragh Small.

Loughrea Golf Club in Ireland, which was already struggling due to having not enough members to provide the financial support it needed, was rocked when three members of staff died suddenly all in the same month, November 2017.

Treasurer Adrian Callanan was tasked with helping to stabilise the facility.

The 53-year-old joined Loughrea Golf Club in 2010.

“I knew about 20 people in the club and I was happy enough to leave it at that until 2014 when I was asked by the chairman at the time if I would be interested in coming in as treasurer. I said no problem and I did,” he said.

Adrian Callanan (Loughrae) winner of the Volunteer of the Year award during the Connacht Regional Golf Ireland AGM on Wednesday 18th January 2023.
Picture Thos Caffrey / Golffile.ie
All photo usage must carry mandatory copyright credit (© Golffile | Thos Caffrey

“I was treasurer of the main club for three years. It was difficult times for the club, while we weren’t heavily in debt we weren’t really able to cope with the debt that we had. We didn’t have enough members to serve the debt that we had.

“It was always a battle fundraising, trying to get new members in, offering special deals, all this kind of thing, having auctions, all things that were kind of a side as to what the running of a golf club should be.”

And things took another turn in November 2017 when Loughrea Golf Club’s office manager Danny Hynes died one Sunday evening. The following Saturday morning the club’s course manager Colm Muldoon also passed and later that month the competitions’ secretary, Neil McGhee, died too.

“It was very emotional and even recalling it now I still get a bit upset. A very dark time for the club, all three deaths were very sudden and they were all very active in the club,” said Callanan.

“Danny Hynes died on a Sunday and when I opened the office door on the Monday morning I just started crying. I didn’t know where or how I was going to start because it was like putting a 10,000-piece jigsaw together and you didn’t know what the jigsaw looked like.”

But they had to piece things together as well as they could, especially with an AGM around the corner and there had been no accounts prepared at that time.

Callanan drafted in the help of an accountant who was a member in the club and together they got the accounts in order for the annual meeting.

It took long hours though, Callanan remembers a six-week block where most days he would be in the club at 9am and wouldn’t leave again until 11pm.

But the club got through it and Callanan, who stood down as treasurer, continued to volunteer in the office. And then the pandemic struck.

“When Covid came there was a big panic, everybody thought that the world was ending,” said Callanan.

“The golf club was closed, it was heavily in debt and it hadn’t the capacity to make the repayments to the bank.”

Callanan, who was awarded the Connacht Club Volunteer of the Year earlier this year, was desperate to provide the club with a sustainable future, and returned as treasurer to give the club a financial platform to build from.

“Everything has gone crazy so we have to look at all of our costs and try to minimise wherever we can,” said Callanan.

“The two big ones would have been electricity and oil. Very little we can do in terms of the cost of oil but the gas price never really went crazy like electricity did.

“We would never have thought of putting in solar panels two years ago because the unit price of electricity was 16c, 17c a unit. The payback would have been 12, 13 years on the solar panels back then.

“But with the energy crisis our unit price went up to a high of 70c a unit. So the payback period was much shorter. The whole system cost us €12,000 [about £10,500] plus VAT. So our payback is a little over three years.

“And we try now to be much more economical with appliances. Fridges are knocked off at night, the heating only comes on at certain times. If there is a day when the clubhouse is closed there will be no heat on.

“We just became more aware of the costs that were involved because of the huge increase.

“We also got a big influx of members, as everybody did, in 2020. That enabled us to clear our overdraft and in the first year we put ourselves on a more steady financial footing. The second year we managed to hold onto those members which meant that we were able to build a surplus.

“We installed a new irrigation system around our greens. Before that in periods of drought greenkeepers would have to come in at 10pm and hand-water the greens which was a backward step. Our new sprinkler system was all automated and has cut down our wage bill.

“We built a new clubhouse 40 years ago. The car park that was put in was okay but it was only tar and chip, and it wasn’t tarmacked. So when you drove in you were driving into this potholed, gravely car park. The first impression you got was of a run-down place, it let the club down.

“So we re-surfaced the car park and relined it last year. It makes a huge first impression when you drive into Loughrea Golf Club now.”