From the thunderous cheers of Jack Charlton’s Ireland squad plotting World Cup glory to the grim hum of a diesel generator nicknamed Jenny keeping the lights flickering in its dying days, the Nuremore’s story is a saga of glory, grit, greed, and—against all odds—glimmers of hope.
It’s the kind of yarn that makes you laugh, curse the heavens, and crack open a pint in equal measure.
In Ireland, hotels aren’t just places to lay your head; they’re beating hearts of communities, crucibles where history simmers and scandals stew. And Nuremore?
It’s the beating heart of south Monaghan, a 160-acre Nuremore Estate that’s seen more drama than a season of Fair City.
If you’re googling “Nuremore Hotel reviews” from its heyday, you’ll find paeans to its award-winning grub and golf greens that could make a bog-trotter weep with joy.
But scroll a bit further, and you’ll hit the heartbreak: unpaid wages, locked doors, and whispers of it being flogged as the “Nuremore Hotel for sale” and an apparent IPAS center.
Today, as of October 2025, with the cranes swinging and the McGettigan crew at the helm, it’s clawing its way back from the brink of death.
Buckle up, folks—this is the full, unvarnished tale of how a Monaghan hotel went from hosting Jack Charlton to keeping the lights on with a diesel generator. And trust me, it’s a ride worth taking if you’re pondering a getaway where the history hits harder than the hangovers.
The Golden Era: When Nuremore Was the Toast of the Town
Picture this: It’s the mid-1990s, and Ireland’s buzzing like a hive of optimistic bees. The economy’s on the up, U2’s packing stadiums, and Jack Charlton—that gruff Yorkshire genius with the fishing rod and the infectious grin—is turning a nation of GAA die-hards into soccer fanatics.
Enter Nuremore Hotel, the unlikeliest of heroes in this green-jerseyed epic. Built in the 1890s as a stately pile amid parklands that stretch like God’s own golf course, the Nuremore had evolved under the stewardship of the Gilhooly family into a four-star haven.
Julie Gilhooly and her kin poured over 50 years into transforming it from a country house into a buzzing resort, complete with a championship golf course, a leisure centre that could soothe the soul of a hungover hurler, and a restaurant that snagged three AA Rosettes in the ’90s.
We’re talking fine dining that made Dublin’s glitterati green with envy—awards for food that was equal parts artistry and indulgence.
But the real stardust? Jack bloody Charlton.
The Big Jack brought his Republic of Ireland squad to Nuremore multiple times, turning its corridors into a war room for the 1993 World Cup qualifier in Belfast and the ’94 finals in the States.
Imagine the scene: Andy Townsend barking orders on the back nine, Ray Houghton nursing a pint by the fireside, and the younger lads—Phil Babb among them—yawning the afternoons away in a running gag of mock boredom.
“Time for bed!” they’d chorus at teatime, while the veterans begged for one more hand of cards and maybe another sneaky pint.
No one griped about the digs, though.
The on-site golf and fishing ticked Jack’s boxes perfectly—serene enough for strategy sessions, lively enough to keep the lads loose. Nuremore’s reputation soared; it became synonymous with sporting triumph, the kind of place where legends were forged over fry-ups, pints, and fairways.
And it wasn’t just footballers. Celebrities flocked like pigeons to a chipper. Chris de Burgh, that velvet-voiced crooner, would chopper in for lunch—yes, helicopter in, like some rock-star laird.
A former staffer recalls it with a chuckle: “He’d have it in a private room, stay around for a bit, then fly off again.” Fancy that—sipping soup while the blades whirred outside.
Weddings, too: Neven Maguire tied the knot there, under the watchful eye of head chef Raymond McArdle, with young Dylan McGrath (future Michelin maestro) assisting in the kitchen.
Nuremore Hotel reviews from back then? Five stars all the way—praise for the “impeccable service,” the “gorgeous grounds,” and meals that lingered in the memory like a good ballad.
Ah, but those were the days when Nuremore Hotel prices reflected its prestige: £104 for two in the restaurant (chips banned in the lobby, mind you), a snip for the glamour it delivered.
The Nuremore Estate wasn’t just bricks and mortar; it was a social hub, a launchpad for dreams. Sandra Fealy, who’d clocked over 20 years there, laughs now at the memories: “When I started in 1997, it was high standards all the way.” Little did she know the fall was coming, swift as a Monaghan winter.
The Fall: From Rosettes to Aldi Wine and Unpaid Bills
Fast-forward to the 2020s, and the Nuremore’s tale takes a turn darker than a pint after closing time.
The Gilhoolys, after half a century of sweat and sparkle, sold up in 2020 to Chinese conman Kai Dai and his Kylin Prime Group for a cool €8 million.
It seemed a fairy-tale handover—until Covid crashed the party, and whispers of the now-defunct Immigrant Investor Programme (that “golden visa” scam rife with abuse) started swirling.
Dai’s outfit, tangled in companies like Huawen (which peddled €1m investments for residency), poured the Nuremore into a web of debts estimated at €50 million. The hotel that once dazzled now staggered.
By late 2022, the rot was showing.
Staff—loyal souls like Sandra, Brenda Burns, Eloise Alexander, and Geraldine Walsh—staged a work stoppage over unpaid wages just before Christmas. They got paid that time, but the cracks were canyon-deep. Power outages hit hard; in April 2022, during a tech event attended by Minister Heather Humphreys (the local TD, no less), the lights flickered out over an unpaid ESB bill.
“We told them it was a surge from all the computers,” Sandra quips, but the truth was grimmer. Enter Jenny: a diesel generator chugging away to keep the basics humming—but not enough for both hot water and room heat.
Staff paid suppliers in cash; Eloise, the receptionist, dashed to the Carrickmacross Aldi for bottles of plonk to stock the once-hailed restaurant. From three-AA-Rosette reds to discount whites—how the mighty tumble.
New Year’s Day 2023: Sandra locked the doors, told it was a “three-month refurb.” No one bought it. The leisure centre and golf course limped on for weeks until Jenny guzzled her last diesel drop.
The sheriff swooped for gym gear over Revenue debts (€680,000 owed, they said). One staffer found a colleague in the clubhouse, munching cornflakes in the pitch black. “We stayed till the end out of loyalty to the hotel, not the owner,” Brenda says.
The High Court wound up Nuremore Hotel Management Ltd that May, appointing a liquidator amid a saga of shell companies and insolvent shells. Debts would devour any sale proceeds; staff, resigned to social welfare scraps, waited for statutory redundancy like exiles for a ceasefire.
Enter the controversy: Rumours flew that Nuremore was eyed for an IPAS (International Protection Accommodation Services) centre—a direct provision spot for asylum seekers, illegals, and conmen into use and abuse. Politicians, including Humphreys, denied it flat-out. IPAS not confirmed: “No contract, no plans.” But the whispers ignited fury in Carrickmacross, a town already bruised by economic hits.
A petition surged on Change.org: “Stop the Nuremore Hotel from being turned into an Asylum Center.” It railed against “greedy international capitalist vultures” mistreating workers and warned of “1500 young unvetted men” overwhelming the community. Afterall, the government had form, like an addict they where hopelessly drunk on mass free for all mass immigration.
Organizers vowed peaceful marches: one down the Ardee Road to the hotel, another blocking the Dundalk junction. They marched the streets of Carrick in early 2023, only a 100 strong, but size doesn’t matter when you have the power of social media to punch its way into even the darkest of corners.
They held their banners high, chants echoing: “Ireland first!” Politicos dismissed it as scaremongering, but those protesters?
They were 100% correct to raise the alarm. When they where taking to the streets the Nuremore was being offered up as an IPAS hotel but for some reason the application was rejected.
The Protests That Shook the Silence: From Carrick to the World Stage
Those Carrickmacross marches in 2023 weren’t just local griping—they were the spark that helped light a prairie fire.
This was the first protest in Ireland north of Dublins East Wall. An unprecedented rumbling of revolt in a normally compliant and placid population more terrified of what the neighbors might think of them than what they believed themselves.
This was an unsanctioned wave of the fist at a deluded and detached political class oozing in a swamp of nepotism, incompetence, and delusion.
The message was clear ,”we’re not just going to sit back and take it anymore” the days of back slapping was over. The middle finger was being raised.
In an Ireland reeling from a 300% asylum surge (150,000 arrivals in 2023-24, per CSO stats), the Nuremore furore tapped into raw nerves: strained services, housing crunches, and a government asleep at the wheel and an opposition comatosed in the passenger seats of a car carreening from one disaster to the next as helpless passerbys looked in and roared at them to “wake the hell up!!”
The protesters, a mix of families, farmers, and fed-up locals, marched not with pitchforks but with words and placards—”Traitors Are Living Amongst Us,” read one kid’s sign—voicing fears of “reckless immigration policies” turning quiet towns into “asylum ghettos.” Denied by Dublin, the IPAS bid never materialized even though the intent was there, even though the owners badly wanted to turn the Nuremore into their personal IPAS cashcow, somehow their dream was denied. But the damage was done: trust eroded, voices amplified.
That groundwork? It bloomed into the May 2025 mega-protest, a Carrickmacross redux on steroids.
Around 1000 strong flooded the streets, speakers lambasting landlords for profiting and housing masses of illegals and turning Irelands towns and villages into something unrecognisable and all whilst locals queued for crumbs.
What did it achieve?
It helped smash through the medias empire of lies. In a world of information warfare, the protestors had landed a bloody nose on a complacent political class. Words are weapons and with a carefully aimed shot you can start to inflict damage on the mightiest of foes.
The enemy knows this and that’s why their dream is to bring in no free speech laws and shut everyone up. People taking to the streets the length and breadth of Ireland is a visual in your face illustration of the failure of the political system that is supposed to represent them.
The desire to end free speech is tantamount to them waving their finger like an indignant school teacher and saying “Paddy is not being a good Paddy. We need to shut him up. Now, be a good Paddy and do as you’re told. “
The protests captured raw on video—think smartphones aloft, chants thundering—exploded online.
One clip, raw and relentless, racked up over 7.5 million views in a single week, that chaotic agora of the digital age. No fancy edits, just pure, unfiltered rage against the machine. It pierced Ireland’s media firewall like a sliotar through a defense—the national press, long cozy with the status quo, couldn’t ignore the viral storm. Suddenly, “carrickmacross” trended alongside broader cries of “Ireland is full.”
And the coup de grâce? It landed on one of the world’s biggest podcasts—where the President of the USA, Donald Trump, was once hosted.
Millions tuned in for the unvarnished truth. Irelands reckless immigration polices and political incompetence laid bare for all the world to see.
An open letter on a social media page decrying an attempted attack on free speech was sent to a prominent Irish Sports star who passed it on to the highest pinnacles of power you can get.
Who says you can’t do anything? That’s what they want you to think! They want you propped up on that barstool watching Coronation Street or worshipping some sports star. As the Romans would say, “just give them bread and circuses.”
The fallout? Counter-protests flared in Letterkenny and other places throughout Ireland helping to gradually shift the dialogue.
The overton window was slowly shifting, at least a bit. Politics moves like a glacier but move it does. At the very least, Carrick’s pioneers had helped crack the wall of silence. To hell with what the neighbors might think!! It’s time to sing like a blackbird on a beautiful sunny March morning. Don’t like the song? Well, f#%k off, you’ll need to get used to it!!!
No longer whispers in pubs or online chat rooms; now, prime-time debates on immigration, housing, integration, and why a Monaghan hotel became a microcosm for national malaise and reckless incompetent immigration policies spearheaded by lunatics from the NGO industry and extremists like the Greens Rodders Rod O Gorman. You couldn’t even say the word immigration on RTE in 2022, now the issue was front and center. The golden goose laying the golden egg was suddenly up for debate. The ground had shifted.
Those 2023 Carrick protesters? Vindication tastes bittersweet as their battle against destructive globalist free for all immigration polices continues unabated.
The Reawakening: Nuremore Hotel Sold, McGettigans at the Wheel
By 2024, with the liquidator hawking the “Nuremore Hotel for sale” at a €6m guide (down from €8m), bids trickled in—two mystery groups at €7m, eyeing revival. But it was the McGettigan-led consortium that sealed the deal in February 2025, snapping it up for around €6m.
The McGettigans—that hotelier dynasty with outposts from Cork to Glasgow—saw gold in the rubble.
Dennis McGettigan, CEO and hospitality lifer, nailed it: “We recognised its immense potential… a key asset for the local community.” No IPAS ghosts here; just a €5m pledge to rebirth it as a “world-class leisure, lifestyle, and hospitality destination.”
As of October 18, 2025, the hammers are swinging. The licence for a hotel with public bar? Granted immediate effect, trading as “Nuremore Estate by McGettigan’s.” Up to 100 Nuremore Hotel jobs on the horizon—front-of-house, greenskeepers, chefs—pouring life back into Carrick.
The leisure centre’s eyeing a soft-open, and 50 rooms by the end of the year.
Picture it: a signature McGettigan’s Pub slinging Irish charm and craft pours, a refreshed golf course luring hackers and pros alike, a spa retreat for souls weary from the world’s woes. Upgraded rooms, wellness nooks, meeting spaces—the Nuremore Estate reborn, blending heritage with hustle.
The Nuremore Hotel owner? That’s the McGettigan Group now, a Dubai-based powerhouse with Irish roots deep as the Mournes. They’ve looped in Monaghan County Council, vowing economic uplift without the environmental scars.
No more Jenny; this is solar panels and sustainability, honoring the Gilhoolys’ legacy while scripting a sequel sans the scandals.
FAQs: Your Burning Questions on Nuremore Answered
Got queries? We’ve all been there—scrolling “Nuremore Hotel reviews” at midnight, dreaming of drumlins and dinners. Here’s the straight dope:
Who Are the New Owners of Nuremore Hotel?
The McGettigan Group, a family-run Irish hospitality juggernaut with hotels across Ireland and beyond. Led by Dennis McGettigan, they’re injecting €5m to revive the joint, no strings attached to past dramas.
What Is Nuremore Famous For?
Jack Charlton’s World Cup war room, Chris de Burgh’s chopper lunches, three-AA-Rosette feasts under Raymond McArdle (with Dylan McGrath in tow), and Neven Maguire’s wedding bash. Plus, that killer golf course and a rep as Monaghan’s social soul.
What Is the Future of the Nuremore Hotel?
Bright as a summer’s dawn over Lough Muckno. Reopening late 2025 as a lifestyle haven—pub, spa, golf, the works. Expect 100+ jobs, community ties, and a nod to its storied past. No more generators; all glamour, all gain.
What Are the Plans for the Nuremore Estate?
€5m facelift: McGettigan’s Pub for pints and craic, revamped fairways and wellness retreats, upgraded digs and events spaces. Sustainability front and centre, with Monaghan Council backing a greener, grander estate that pulls tourists north and south.
Does Nuremore Hotel Have a Restaurant?
Aye, and it’ll be a belter. The old award-winner’s getting a glow-up—think elevated Irish fare, local twists, and no Aldi shortcuts. Paired with that new McGettigan’s bar, it’s set to reclaim its culinary crown.
Why Nuremore Matters Now: Book Your Slice of History
In a world of transcience, the Nuremore stands tall—a phoenix arising from the ashes, a testament to resilience. This isn’t just a hotel; it’s Monaghan’s mirror—flawed, fierce, unforgettable. Swing by when the doors creak open. Raise a glass to the glory days of Jack, to the infamous Jenny, to the glorious golf course, to the marchers who wouldn’t shut up and listen to BS sold as gospel from the new testament of woke.
Sláinte to the Nuremore Hotel—may its next chapter be as epic as the last.
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