He may have sold out of his famed hotel, Kenmare’s The Park, back in 2023, but Francis Brennan hasn’t gone far; he still spends much of his day on the grounds of the hotel, as he bought a penthouse apartment, one of 18 properties at The Park, to live in.
While there is a back entrance to the apartments, which means he “never sees the hotel” coming to and fro, he still drops in.
“Everyone’s post is delivered to the hotel, so I call in every and now then,” he says.
But is it an emotional visit? Does he miss the hotel?
“Not one single bit. My mother said, when I was five or seven, that I was great at compartmentalising everything. So, my hotel period is over now, and I’m moving on.”
Moving on if not quite moving out then.
Now 72, Brennan, who ran the hotel with his brother John, says he’s “semi-retired”.
“As long as I have my health I’ll be running around. I like the diary to be busy with things coming up,” he says, noting that as his mother lived till she was 96, “I have a good 20 years to go.”
“And I have a diary to die for,” he laughs, “I tell people ‘I haven’t got a day free’.”
The Park Hotel, Kenmare, Co Kerry
He used to publish his own, The Homekeeper’s Diary, but rising paper and publishing costs put an end to that in 2023.
“It’s a pity, it was a lovely publication, but I have no books in the offing now,” he says.
Now his diary is the back of an already used A4 envelope, which he has marked out in each month of the year.
But whether it’s written up on an envelope or in a diary, there’s no doubting that his time is well accounted for; he’s an Age Friendly Ireland ambassador, which takes up about three days a month, he films for RTÉ’s At Your Service, the hospitality makeover show, with John, which takes about 40 days a year, while earlier this week, he was on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, reporting on the St Patrick’s Day parade for a US TV channel.
He also goes further afield.
“I still travel quite a bit, and everywhere I go I’m watching out … I have a camera full of ideas,” he says. “Travel opens the mind.”
I’ll die in Kerry – I’m not leaving Kerry
— Francis Brennan
A recent trip was to San Diego in California, where he visited the renowned Hotel del Coronado, catching the sun, before moving cross country to the snow in New York.
But it is his collaboration with Dunnes Stores that might be his biggest current venture. We meet at the Dunnes Stores’ HQ – a deceptively large building, as the space is much larger than it looks from Dublin’s George’s Street – where the Francis Brennan brand has a sun-lit showroom.
[ The creatives of Kenmare, Killarney’s more peaceful sisterOpens in new window ]
He is the same in-person, as he is on television: great company, with tales of fiery flambés, his sister’s recent 70th birthday, the best feathers for a duvet or cushion – those from the neck of a duck or goose – and a “whopping night of a party” at a recent Age Friendly AGM.
This year he’s celebrating a decade with Ireland’s largest privately-owned retailer, having started off back in 2016 with just eight products, mostly linen and duvets for a bed. Now the product line is up to about 400.
“I’m there 10 years now – Dunnes is very happy with me, and I’m happy with them,” he says.
He’s impressed with the way Dunnes has segmented its offering into different brands – in homeware Francis Brennan sits alongside Carolyn Donnelly Eclectic, Paul Costelloe Living, Considered by Helen James, and Cook with Neven Maguire – and their focus on quality.
Francis Brennan is engaged with all aspects of his collection with Dunnes Stores. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
“They are very, very strict on standards, and if anything is wrong with the product, it won’t be on the shelf,” he says.
The USP of the Francis Brennan The Collection range is simple: “anything you can find in a five-star luxury hotel, we can replicate at a good price” says Brennan. “There’s a look and we try and stay within it.”
The range now encompasses rugs, furniture, picture frames, lighting etc. Towels are from Portugal, feathers for the duvets come from Westport, and china and furniture are made in China. This Easter a collection of glass eggs and ceramic bunnies that light up can be found in among the bed linen.
“We always want to give the customer a little lift – so that they’d look at it and say ‘that’s gorgeous’” .
Brennan is engaged with all aspects of his collection with Dunnes Stores, and is in the office about two days every six weeks (the retailer also has full time staff assigned to the range).
Its biggest seller is bed linen.
“The quality of it is wonderful; we don’t use regular cotton, we use percale cotton,” he says.
At design meetings, Brennan will bring an idea, something perhaps he saw on his travels, and the team will try and get a “sensible” price to produce it – if so, it will then end up in the shops, after some alterations. Products have a lead time of about nine to 12 months.
The move into homewares was not such a great leap for the former hotelier.
Retail is in his blood; his father was a grocer, with a shop first in Milltown, Dublin 6, before moving out to Stepaside, as the city grew. Brennan grew up in Dublin, and attended the Catholic University School on Leeson Street.
But it was the hotel business that brought him to Kerry, where he started out leasing The Park back in 1984, before his brother John joined him in 1991.
Now he has no plans to leave.
“I’ll die in Kerry – I’m not leaving Kerry,” he says.
Francis Brennan with his brother John, filming RTE’s At Your Service
While the duo sold out of The Park in 2023, selling to US-based entrepreneur Bryan Meehan, and John still owns nearby Dromquinna Manor, the duo still have an interest in a hotel in the town.
When The Park was being sold back in 2023, The Lansdowne Hotel, also in Kenmare, was also put on the market by the Brennans, and the brothers subsequently came to a deal with Patrick Hanley, a former general manager of the five-star Park Hotel, who now runs it with his wife Aileen.
The hotel had previously been owned by Hanley’s family, and under a lease agreement, Hanley will run it until this November, with an option then to buy.
It’s a model that served both Francis, and his brother John, well in the past – Brennan leased The Park for two years when it was in liquidation, in 1984, before convincing the bank to lend to him so he could buy it, as did John at Dromquinna.
“It’s a marvellous way to give a leg up to the next generation,” says Brennan.
Brennan has been a regular on TV since 2008; he even made one of the top 10 moments on the Late Late Show according to this paper, for his mishap back in 2016, when he struggled to put a cover on a duvet to the glee of presenter and audience alike.
Francis Brennan has been a regular on TV since 2008. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
Has he spoken since to then presenter Ryan Tubridy, who has since left RTÉ?
“I thought it was unfortunate,” he says of the circumstances around the presenter’s departure, adding that while he hasn’t seen him in ages, he sent him a note for his recent wedding.
He is still on our screens in At Your Service – the 2026 series is not yet finished – but would he consider more reality TV?
“I am asked for things all the time; I’ve been asked to do Dancing with the Stars, but my foot couldn’t take it,” he says.
In any case, it might be hard to squeeze in another venture given his hectic diary. And Brennan doesn’t do regrets.
“If I died this minute, I would have had a most fantastic life. I’m so happy I can say that, because unfortunately a lot of people are not happy at work. But I was very lucky all the years, I loved my job.”
Easter bunny with egg in a range of sizes, priced at €10, €12, €15 
Glass LED egg, €12 
Francis Brennan Clydagh teacup and saucer, €12 
Francis Brennan mink towels, from €4 
Francis Brennan grey double stripe bedlinen, €45