Declan McNelis

Most people would describe Declan McNelis as an amiable, affable and patient person with a great sense of humor.

For a tour bus driver, these are essential qualities.

McNelis, who will turn 60 in July, is a coach driver who spends his working hours piloting a tour bus around Ireland. He navigates the tightest turns with ease and can parallel park a 40-foot coach like it was a Fiat 500, which is what he was doing in Cong just before this interview began. Cong, in County Mayo, is the village where part of the 1952 film, “The Quiet Man” was shot.

As he scoots the coach up tight to the curb just past the village proper, McNelis said he enjoys his gig behind the wheel.

“It’s a people kind of job,” he said. “You need to like people and get on with people. I get on with Americans and I like touring Americans. The company I work for is a good one.”

McNelis was born in County Donegal, the fifth of 10 children. Donegal is on the Republic of Ireland’s border with Northern Ireland. Although the Irish signed a treaty of independence from Great Britain in 1921, the Unionist or pro-British Protestants formed the majority of the population in Northern Ireland. They ran the state, shutting Irish Catholics out of jobs and political power through discrimination and gerrymandering. By the late 1960s, the Catholics were demonstrating for equal civil rights and the Protestant government responded with violence, setting the time of the “Troubles” into motion. The violence escalated, killing more than 3,500 people, and continued until 1998 with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

McNelis is old enough to have lived through that time.

“I was born at home, in 1963,” he says. “That’s what people did–had their babies at home. I think the three youngest in my family were born in hospital.”

McNelis’s father was born in the Republic of Ireland, while his mother was from Derry, in Northern Ireland. The children were all raised Catholic.

“My dad, he spoke Irish before he spoke English, and me mum didn’t know any Irish being she was from the north,” McNelis said. “But, at that time, people didn’t think about teaching their children a second language. I wish they had.”

McNelis and his siblings were raised Catholic. As a child, he said, he spent a lot of time outdoors. Donegal is bordered on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean and McNelis loved spending time by the sea. He remembers his father as being strict.

“Most of the time, I spent out of the house, outside, because it was safer to be out of the house,” he said.

Growing up, he said, he often stayed with his Catholic grandmother in Derry. Tensions between the Catholics and Protestants were rapidly approaching a boiling point when McNelis was a youngster.

“The Troubles were in full swing then,” McNelis recalls. “I saw and took part in riots that were going on. We were throwing stones at the British Army. It was just the way it was, I didn’t know any different.”

When McNelis was 16, he decided to become a deep sea fisherman so he enrolled in the National Fisheries College in Greencastle in his home county of Donegal.

“I did that for 16 years,” he said. “We fished all over the North Atlantic, from Norway to France. Then I broke two bones in my back and it took me two years to recover.”

He never returned to his work aboard the fishing vessel, instead opting for work as a semi driver. The license included a certificate for driving a coach and he has done that work fairly regularly over the last 35 years.

“I did work in Boston for about two and a half years,” McNelis said. “My daughter and grandchildren live in Boston and I was visiting them and I was offered a job laying gas line. I didn’t need to work, but I did it. It is hard work, it’s a tough job and it’s dangerous. When Covid hit, I was advised to get home to Ireland before the borders were closed.

“I made it just in time.”

McNelis does get a bit of travel in when he’s not working for the coach company. He’s been to Disneyworld a few times, and he enjoys spending time there with his children and grandchildren.

“I love playing with my grandchildren,” he said. “And being anywhere by the sea.”

With the Troubles fading into distant memory and changes in the political landscape, McNelis and many of his Irish countrymen are eying the future of their island with more than a little hope. As recently as last October, when the population of Catholic nationalists outnumbered Protestant loyalists, there has been serious talk about a united Ireland. McNelis said he is hopeful a united Ireland could still happen in his lifetime. Over the last 20 years, companies from around the world have made their way to Ireland to take advantage of a favorable tax rate and that has meant jobs and a better economy for Ireland. In fact, in its guide to Irish businesses for 2023, published last week, The Irish Times listed the following “top 10” companies: Apple Ireland, Microsoft, Google, Meta Ireland, CRH, Medtronic, Johnson Controls, DCC, Eaton Corp., and Dell Ireland.

“Things are changing,” McNelis said. “Great Britain has no use for Northern Ireland, it costs them billions and they don’t need it. There are now a lot more nationalists than loyalists because the nationalists have been increasing and the loyalists haven’t. They’ve done polls and more people seem to want a united Ireland.

“I think I will live to see it, I hope I do.”

Bill McCauley (l) of Adrian with Declan McNelis at Robinson’s in Belfast, Northern Ireland, June 26, 2023. Bottom photo: Declan behind the wheel of the EF Tours coach, June 2023.