Tara is working to make Sligo a better place for business and for those living here
Sligo EBS branch manager Tara Rodgers reflects on her 30 years in banking, her vital role as president of the Sligo Chamber of Commerce and the growth of opportunities for women
WHO knows what a potential customer walking into the EBS branch in Sligo sees when they call for the first time to meet the manager, Tara Rodgers.
Those of a certain age and certainly most from Bundoran will know Tara is typical of so many from the seaside resort, whose families are in business. Tara’s family ran the hugely popular Imperial Hotel in the Donegal town. She, as the youngest of five, along with her sister Gráinne, brothers David, Tracey, and Shane, all did their bit in the ‘Imperial’.
Elected recently to serve a second term as president of Sligo Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Tara is conscious that one of the big issues to be addressed in Sligo is the chronic shortage of places to live.
Those concerns, her own views, and experiences in terms of the challenges faced by women who are successful in their careers and views on the need for businesses to put the customer first, are among a broad range of topics covered here in this piece.
But for many in Sligo unaware of where she cut her teeth in the working world, we need to go to Bundoran.
She remembers with great fondness the influence her late parents had on her. Her dad, Raymond, was only 56 when he died and her mother, Patricia, passed away in March 2021, close to her 90th birthday.
By the time she was a teenager there was little or nothing she hadn’t done, or couldn’t do in terms of helping in the hotel. She got to count the takings along with her dad on a Monday morning and, having ‘cashed-up’, head with him to the bank in Sligo to lodge that money.
She could ‘do the books’ and was on her way to a career in banking, aged 10. From the first day she walked into the National Irish Bank on Stephen Street, as a 10-year-old girl, she was smitten by that world.
She can’t explain it, but even then, she felt at home. “From the first visit, that’s what I wanted to do, there was never a doubt in my head.”
She smiles, her mind drifting back to Bundoran as she recalls: “Mum was always in the kitchen, dad took a more background role, going to the wholesalers, the bank, minding the money. I hung out with him.
“Mum worked everywhere in the hotel, particularly in the kitchen.
“It was a great learning curve for all of us, there was no time to feel sorry for yourself on a lovely summer’s day, “It is the Bundoran way for so many, when the sun is shining in the months from June to the end of August it is all hands on deck, you grow up with that, it did me no harm.”
An early hint of Tara’s drive and her ability to stand on her own two feet came when she was just 15 and left the hotel for a summer to take a job in a local guest house making beds and breakfasts.
“Working for your parents is lovely and all that, but let’s just say pay day can be fluid, so I thought I’d see what other opportunities were about in Bundoran, and all things considered, Mrs Doherty paid well!
“However, to be honest, I know now my mother had a hand in that move too, she wanted me to learn working somewhere other than the hotel, it was a smart move.
“I did see things differently after that. It was something to learn early enough in life, but I realised that broadening your experiences, going somewhere to see how another business does things is a smart move – if you are listening and learning – and you have a good teacher/boss, who Mrs Doherty was.” That was 1985. Five years later, on a cold wintry morning, Tara officially began her career in banking when she walked in the door of the Bank of Ireland branch in Ballybofey.
It was a busy branch. She was one of 22 people on ‘batch’ as it is known, looking after cash, customer service, and lending.
From the then family home at Roguey in Bundoran the trip would have taken slightly less than one hour, but times were different and roads weren’t as good. Ballybofey seemed a long, long way from home – so she lived for most or at least part of the week in the Twin Towns.
“An odd time I’d hitch a lift home during the week, but I stayed in Ballybofey, worked, and socialised there.
“These days people would [probably drive up and down that road, but not then, it seemed so far away.”
It’s difficult to keep track of her many moves across the north-west within the banking world since then, suffice to say all of them were upwards.
In some, not all cases, those moves and promotions came very quickly, roughly every two to three years in her early working life.
In 1992 she moved to the Bank of Ireland branch in Donegal town and from there, in 1994, she made her first move to Sligo.
But she was soon on the move again, as acting manager in Ballyshannon, then manager in her native Bundoran, then manager of the bigger branch in Ballyshannon. After that she took up a regional role, she was in Sligo for under three years as regional sales manager.
ASEMINAL moment must have been her return to Ballybofey – as branch manager. From there she moved to Letterkenny.
In 2016 she returned to Stephen Street in Sligo, other moves saw her become county manager in Sligo, then appointed manager of Sligo-LeitrimRoscommon where she had more than 60 staff reporting to her. After two years she left in December 2020 and started in EBS Sligo as branch manager in February 2021.
At EBS, she’s a tied agent of AIB. Commenting on her role, she said: “I’ll put it like this, in EBS our exclusive role is providing mortgages and you will find if you ring, we will answer the phone, you will get a personal service here and you can talk to me or staff members about your needs.” Customers going in to meet her in the EBS branch at 22 Grattan Street, will be talking to a woman who broke
LEFT: Tara Rodgers outside Sligo Town Hall wearing the Chamber of Commerce chains of office with whom she is president.
to have to juggle an awful lot more. “That’s just my view so I think dealing with that reality, women need an awful lot more support around them. “You must have that network and you have to be a very good delegator. Any woman who wants to progress their career and move up in their chosen career must be really good at delegating.
“For me personally, if you ask me the question, has there been a time when I was overstepped by a man my answer would be ‘probably at some stage’, but it was nothing that was going to set me back.
“I would always look and say, ‘well it wasn’t my time’ and I would work harder to get it the next time.
“It wasn’t something that would consume me when I was progressing through my career.”
Looking back at her own experiences, Tara said she found herself at meetings where all her colleagues were male.
“Going into that situation at first, I would listen and observe, until I felt comfortable. I would then offer my perspective and I would make sure that I had clearly thought out what I felt was the right road to take, and that’s what I brought to those largely male-dominated tables, but that has changed since then.
“There are now more women in similar positions to men in all careers, but yes, I would like to see more, but it is a process for all of us.”
NOW in her second year as president of Sligo Chamber of Commerce, Tara is upbeat in her projections for the future.
She accepts that the more recent world events, specifically the war in Ukraine, has, in a different but no less significant way to Covid-19, added challenges for everyone, but specifically for the business community.
Her personal view is that inflation will stabilise, but it will take time.
“It is very challenging, but my own view is that we won’t have a ‘proper’ full recession, and we will emerge slower than we would wish from what is now a tricky time for everyone, not least those in business:
“Obviously retail and tourism suffered greatly. Businesses had to diversify, and then there’s been rising costs and inflation on top of that, but I detect an air of positivity around the place now.
“Businesses have come through the worst of it by showing remarkable resilience. And if they could survive the past two years, they can withstand anything.”
She is hopeful that her efforts at relationship building will now begin to pay dividends: “Now that the various restrictions of the pandemic have been lifted, I want to build on those relationships and the experiences of the past year to make a meaningful difference for Sligo as we look ahead to 2023.”
Perhaps one of the bigger concerns Sligo Chamber and their president share is the need for more housing in Sligo.
She said: “In Sligo, we need to be building up to 430 houses per year to keep up with demand but we’re probably only building around 150 now – which is a dramatic shortfall.
“Sligo Chamber is working with the local authority, councillors, the Land Development Agency, and our members, to see what we can do to turn this situation around.”
Away from work, Tara does manage to strike a reasonable life/work balance, she loves walking “at a brisk pace to keep fit” and enjoys family life with her husband Damien Higgins who runs his own business, Arroo Septic Tanks Services, a wastewater water treatment business which services and empties Septic Tanks.