Denis Guiney (1893-1967) was one of the most remarkable Irishmen of his generation, who exerted through his business career a significant influence on the development of the economy and lifestyle of modern Ireland. As a draper, he rose from working in small country shops to become the owner of one of the country’s biggest enterprises, the largest private company then in Ireland, the successor to part of a commercial empire created by a series of earlier Irish entrepreneurs, which he transformed to serve the ever-increasing and ever-changing needs of the population of a new kind of Ireland. He is one of those whose lives have materially contributed to the creation of the country’s modern prosperity. Many talked airily of a ’New Ireland’. Denis Guiney helped create it.