It was Christmas Day 1993. Padraig O’Ceidigh, a solicitor, was striding alone along a stretch of the coast of Connemara, about 20km to the west of Galway city, after a long dinner. As he walked amid the boulder-strewn bog and heathland, he found, to his astonishment, a fledgling airstrip beside the sea.

“It was not really finished,” he says. “There were JCBs there. I just came across it. I walked up and down the coast there for three or four hours. That is where I got the idea. I got the urge and the vision for it. It was amazing – crazy but amazing.”