Lucinda O'Sullivan's Ireland

Niamh Browne knows the score when it comes to both people and hostel management, writes Lucinda O'Sullivan

WITH a music teacher for a mother, music has been Niamh Browne's life since she was a child, and has been her saving grace in difficult and tragic times.

Niamh has a tremendous personality, and she recently appeared in the Lyric Opera Company Production of Madame Butterfly at the National Concert Hall. She is also involved in Drachen, the company which has reopened the landmark Isaac's Hostel and Jacob's Inn in Dublin city centre.

Isaac's Hostel is one of the the best known hostels in Ireland and was part of the Isaac Hotel Group, which unfortunately went into receivership recently.

Niamh Browne is 42 and was born and bred in Julianstown, Co Meath, where she went to the local primary school before going to secondary school in Drogheda. After leaving school she studied languages at Trinity before doing quite a lot of travelling, including a year in Germany.

"I did America, scrubbed toilets, washed floors, washed salad, as you do when you are a student, but I was always involved in music," she tells me. "My mother, Leontia Browne, is a piano teacher and I was in the church choir from the time I was seven.

"My mother also taught at Gormanston College and they did a show every year, so from about 10 years old I was on stage.

"I started to study singing aged 13 at the College of Music under Daphne Clifford. I went through the grades, feis ceoils, and did the piano as well. After TCD I went on to do a post grad in International Marketing."

Niamh got a job between her finals and post grad with an incoming travel company as a tour guide.

"We were all getting jobs as tour guides and we hadn't a clue about the history of the places! We had such fun, lots of funny stories. The first group I met were Dutch car salesmen who came over for a weekend. They luckily weren't that interested in the history angle, they were here to party.

"The boss of the travel company put her eye on me and offered me a job in the office, but I said no as I needed to finish my course. However, I worked for them one day a week so I got to go to all the Failte Ireland workshops, and go on a few trips and learn about the product.

"I then went into the travel company and worked there for three years, working my way up to sales manager."

After that Niamh joined Isaac's. They were developing the hotel then, and there was also Isaac's Cork.

"I absolutely loved working in Isaac's, it was like my baby. When they opened the hotel, I was asked to manage the hostel, bringing it up to standards, and putting procedures into place.

"Again, I just loved it, and they went on and opened Jacob's Inn. I was involved in all of that, the marketing, and hands-on management, every day was different. Because I had worked in kitchens, and as a chambermaid, I would never expect anyone to do anything I wasn't willing to do myself. One thing I believe is that if you do a job, you've got to do it properly."

A couple of years after Niamh joined Isaac's, she got married to Tony Mitchell.

"I met Tony in O'Dwyer's on Mount Street. It was Friday the 13th and he was due to be picked up by a friend to go to a football match. His friend forgot about him -- and as there were no mobile phones at that time, he was left there on his own. Tony and I clicked immediately."

They got married and had three children Erika, seven, Luke, 10, and Jack, 12.

Tragically, however, Tony died suddenly in May 2010, whilst standing at the side of a football pitch at a training session for Under 10s.

"He loved soccer, he was always on the sideline, always at the matches. He was from Inchicore originally where his dad had worked in CIE. Tony was the first man who never let me down. We loved each other, respected each other.

"We'd had a really busy weekend. We were a busy family with sport and music sessions. He was ages in the shower that morning and I thought he must be tired. He went to work and came in at five o'clock to let me go to the academy for my singing lesson, and he was taking the kids to football. At about 6.20 I got a call to say he had collapsed. He was diabetic, but a very well managed diabetic, he didn't have problems with it.

"I had to stay calm and I headed for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital where he was being taken by ambulance. He just literally sat down at the side of the pitch, lay back, and died.

"In the hospital they brought me into a little room, and you kind of know then that things are not good. The kids were brought to me and the boys said goodbye to their dad and we went home."

Niamh threw herself into her kids. "Everybody gets crap in life, everybody has sadness, and I figured this was my time for sadness, and I didn't want my kids to have grown up saying everything was great and then Dad died, and everything was crap after that.

"So I am really fixed on everything we always did, we're going to go to the football matches, I'm going to be there on the sidelines."

The family also went to Rainbows, which is a confidential 12-week course run mainly for children of bereaved and separated families. The kids loved it. It helped them cope.

Niamh is a positive and determined person -- but when Ann Breslin, the former accountant with Isaac's Group, asked her would she be interested in putting in a proposal to the Receiver to run the two hostels, Isaac's and Jacob's, she had to think -- though not for long.

"I had this really busy life that didn't involve work, so when Ann asked me about the hostels, I had to weigh it up, how would it affect the kids? However, I said yes."

Also involved in Drachen is James Clancy, who managed Isaac's Hostels some years ago. After that he was a director of the Hatters Hostel Group in the UK. "He had just sold his shareholding in Hatters in December 2011. He was on for it, and the three of us get on very well and they are both nice people."

Isaac's Hostel and Jacob's Inn have now reopened.

"The backpacker market is not in decline. You still have students who are travelling, and it is good value. Midweek you will get a bed in a dorm, a light breakfast of tea, toast and orange juice, and free wi-fi for €12. You could also have a private room for €49.

"Jacob's Inn is great for families also: we have twin, triple, and four-bed rooms for families."

But to get back to Niamh's wonderful voice. "For the past four years I have been with Suzanne Murphy, who is with the Welsh National Opera. It is my lifeline, she is just fantastic. She comes over to Dublin to teach at the academy.

"She has been my saving grace. Tony died in May and I went back in September to lessons. Suzanne and I were looking through songs and every one was about a love lost. We had to find every funny song going, about drink, about anything, but now we are back on track. I can now sing the love songs, though I still can't sing Dvorak's Song to the Moon."

Isaac's Hostel is on Frenchman's Lane, Dublin 1. Tel: (01) 855 6215

Originally published in