{"id":498977,"date":"2026-06-14T09:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T09:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/498977\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T09:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T09:01:11","slug":"scrap-happy-cafe-brings-new-life-to-monaghan-town-you-could-replicate-this-all-over-the-country-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/498977\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrap-happy cafe brings new life to Monaghan town: \u2018You could replicate this all over the country\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It doesn\u2019t get more shabby-chic than the Genesis Cafe in Monaghan<\/a> town. There are light fittings made from old sewing machines. A high table is an ancient bicycle topped with timber. Underfoot are repurposed tiles and scaffolding planks. The bones of the once-derelict building are exposed in its bare brick. The loo roll hangs on a piece of salvage from the horsey world. \u201cTake just a \u2018bit\u2019\u201d the sign reads above it, in case you don\u2019t realise the dispenser was once a horse\u2019s bit.<\/p>\n

This whole cafe is made of scrap. Every bit of the fit-out is reimagined from waste material, much of it hauled from skips by builder Kevin McGuire, and given new life in this labour of love. When he first peered in here in the depths of winter 2024, the damp derelict building was typical of thousands of forgotten places in towns all over Ireland. Now it smells of fresh coffee and scones and the place is buzzing with happy customers. Builders are turning the floors above into apartments. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s opening week, and McGuire is pinching himself. The 57-year-old grew up in Killala, Co Mayo<\/a>, one of a family of 12, nine boys and three girls. His dad died when he was young, and he left for London with his brother to work on the building sites. \u201cI learned on the job. My brother was a good carpenter and I learned from him.\u201d He progressed to foreman, and on a trip home one Christmas he met a guy who told him there was demolition work in Monaghan. That work brought him to the town 27 years ago. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeing from Mayo, a lot of people thought I was a guard. It\u2019d always be the first question they\u2019d ask me.\u201d He met his wife Pamela, and they have five sons. When recession hit in 2008 he lost his job, and not long after that everything changed. His eldest son from his first marriage was in a serious crash. \u201cIt was basically dire straits,\u201d he explains, struggling to hold back tears. <\/p>\n

Eventually the doctors told them there was no hope for the 21-year-old. \u201cI remember them bringing us into a room with all the scanners like computers and they had it all on each one, showing the brain, showing the damaged part, and saying he\u2019s going to be in a vegetative state and he\u2019s going to be on life-support, and there was nothing more they could do.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Building a better future with materials rescued from the scrap heapOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

McGuire turned to prayer, \u201cbelieving in God and bigger things and better things\u201d. His son was moved to a specialist ward, where they predicted he would never speak and would not recognise them. \u201cAnd then he just started to change, and they couldn\u2019t understand it.\u201d He was transferred to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in D\u00fan Laoghaire, \u201cand they did amazing work with him there for months and months\u201d, to the point where he recovered and returned to his apprenticeship with the ESB. Today he \u201chas no recollection of the accident, he [has] a small little limp. He\u2019s perfectly fine.\u201d <\/p>\n

The trauma changed everything for McGuire. He travelled to Africa twice on the missions. \u201cYou see what they could make out of nothing,\u201d he says, \u201ctin huts, houses made out of pallets.\u201d <\/p>\n

He came home with a new lens on people struggling with addiction and homelessness. He started buying them coffees, funded tabs in local coffee shops so they could get their own if he wasn\u2019t around. \u201cI\u2019m no counsellor, but sitting down, listening to someone, that\u2019s a therapy: that you\u2019re there and you care.\u201d He did a year in applied social studies and psychology. His unemployment benefit allowed him to volunteer around the town, and build up a relationship with \u201cthose guys and a lot of others\u201d. Then two years ago he went through his own bad patch of depression. \u201cI\u2019d drive down the road and just end up crying and pulling in.\u201d On the outside he could smile, he said, but inside felt \u201clike a massive storm was going on\u201d. <\/p>\n

Salvaging materials and creating things with wood was therapeutic. He mulled over the idea of fitting out a coffee truck, realised the upfront costs would be high, and then started looking for an empty shop in Monaghan. About 17 months ago his now-landlord gave him the key to Mrs Hegarty\u2019s, an old sewing shop on Dublin Street. It had been empty for years and was a blank slate. Papers, letters and other documents from the former business are now housed in a notice board at the back of Genesis. \u201cMrs Hegarty and her husband lived here at one point. This was their kitchen. It\u2019s important for people to know that.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Don\u2019t scrap an older electric vehicle \u2013 just upgrade itOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Has he estimated the cost of the fit-out materials? \u201cI have. It\u2019s zero,\u201d he says. Equipment like the coffee machine had to be bought new, while chairs, stools and bathroom fittings were seconds. The flooring beneath the back room snug where we chat came from a local gym. He had a quote of \u20ac1,600 for hard-wearing lino and couldn\u2019t afford it. \u201cSo I was going to leave the bare concrete.\u201d Then a friend told him the old black rubber floor tiles from the gym were in a skip. Now they\u2019re here, saved from landfill and looking like an expensive new floor.<\/p>\n

Waste is a huge, continuous feature of the building trade. \u201cThey price waste into the price,\u201d he says. It is cheaper to throw materials away than spend skilled time repurposing it. He would love to see salvage warehouses set up with tools as workshops where people could go and make things from waste materials. <\/p>\n

McGuire is thrilled at the reaction of his new customers. Every item is a conversation point. The doorstop is a heavy iron cobbler\u2019s shoe from another business now gone from the town. There\u2019s a piece of Mayo here too. \u2013 the ancient bicycle was his uncle Tommy\u2019s. \u201cHe died a couple of years ago at the age of 93. The bicycle is a part of that from me mum\u2019s side. He was a lovely quiet soul.\u201d <\/p>\n

As towns struggle with dereliction, isolation and the loss of community spaces in town centres, Genesis is a hopeful idea. \u201cYou could replicate this in every town and village in the country,\u201d McGuire believes. \u201cThere are places that haven\u2019t been opened for years and you get all sorts of old stuff. It\u2019s just about going and doing it.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It doesn\u2019t get more shabby-chic than the Genesis Cafe in Monaghan town. There are light fittings made from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1153,72,61,60,709,8764,3773],"class_list":["post-498977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-sustainability","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine","tag-mayo","tag-monaghan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}