"I have had a most interesting life in an industry which has seen
enormous development and is so important to the people
of this country," said Richard Godsil in a 1986 interview.
One of the founding fathers of the Irish dairy industry
and a director of Board Bainne, where he served on the
board for 29 years from 1961 to 1990.
He was also chairman of the Pigs and Bacon Commission,
a director of the Irish Sugar Company, Erin Foods, BIM
and the ESB.
But he was most associated with Fry-Cadbury, where he
was appointed joint managind director in 1954, establishing
their chocolate crumb factory in Rathmore, Co. Kerry,
and overseeing the building and development of their
plant in Coolcock, Dublin.
"Dick Godsil was the most urbane and elegent of men,"
says Tony O'Reilly, who had "great recollections" of
working with him in the early days of the dairy Board.
"But I think his greatest achievement was to convince
the people from Cadbury after the war that Rathmore
was the centre of the earth."
Borne in Boherbue Co. Cork, where his father managed
the local creamery, he started his working life after
U.C.C. in a "travelling creamery" on the Dingle peninsula.
"When Cadbury came after the war to look at Ireland
as a milk shed he managed to convince them that Rathmore
was the centre of the universe," says Dr. O'Reilly.
"You travel through the empty hills of Kerry and come
across this amasing factory, the biggest milk crumb
factory in the world and you realise that Dick Godsil
must have had a rare degree of eloquence to convince
them that right there was the only place in the world
to put it."
He had, says Dr. O'Reilly "a great rapport" with milk
suppliers. He also remembered that Dick Godsil was a
member of the board of Bord Bainne.
Dick Godsil married Noreen Fuller from Listowel in 1936
and they had two children, Ann and Tony.
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