Potential for Cork small business making snooker, billiard and pool tables.
When his son wanted a pool table, Patrick O'Connor identified a gap in the market and decided to make one for him. From this beginning a small industry was born in Cork.
Patrick O'Connor made contact with the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) to carry out a business feasibility report on the market for snooker tables. The report found that there was a big demand for pool and snooker tables in Ireland due to difficulties with imports. There were around two thousand tables imported each year but nobody in Ireland was manufacturing them.
So far Patrick O'Connor has sold every table he has made. His tables produced at home cost roughly the same as the imported alternative. He claims that the tables he produces here in Ireland are superior.
We have a better quality snooker table by far.
Patrick O'Connor now plans to apply to the IDA for a capital grant to expand his business. He is confident that his business will be a success and hopes to employ between 20 and 30 people.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 23 January 1984. The reporter is Tom MacSweeney.
