Based in Parkmore, Co Galway, Belville Building & Construction Galway Ltd is a family-run business which has become renowned as a leading residential construction and development firm. Building Ireland caught up with one of its directors, Shane Gilhooley to hear more about the projects which the company is presently immersed in and its ambitions for sustained growth going forward.
When Shane Gilhooley returned home from his travels abroad in 2019, he did so with the intention of running a construction and development company alongside his father Peter that it’d be known for delivering excellence within its work.
Today, business is flourishing at Belville Building & Construction Galway Ltd and the plan for Peter, Shane and Alan Gilhooley is to try and keep things that way for the foreseeable.
Operating out of Technology House in Technology Park, Parkmore, Co Galway, the company’s projects are primarily based around the general construction of buildings and civil engineering works in the Athenry and Galway city regions.
As for the origins of the business, those date back nearly four decades to a time when Peter Gilhooley – now 72 years of age – took the decision to go out on his own with his construction venture.
His son Shane filled Building Ireland in on the details behind the transition of the old business to the new and how the latter got off the ground over seven years ago.
“It would have been established by my father, Peter Gilhooley, back in 1989,” he outlined. “They were in business right through up until the crash and then, obviously, there was nothing done probably from 2008 until 2019, I would say.
“When I returned from travelling, we relaunched the business together and set about rebuilding it from the ground up. Our first projects were residential homes in Athenry, including a development near the Raheen Woods Hotel.
“It was slow enough starting, obviously, that’s only when things were starting to pick up. So, the first year we would’ve started off doing six or seven houses, and then the next year it was like 10 houses.
“It was an extension of an old estate, which is called The Willows. In the end, we did about 25 houses there over a couple of years. We were only building them as we were selling them, because that’s just the way it was at the time with trying to get finance from banks and everything. You didn’t want to take the risk of going too far ahead of yourself.”
Right now, Belville Building & Construction Galway Ltd is the developer behind the Cluain Lara housing project in Athenry.
The development involves the construction of a dozen residential units and associated infrastructure, with the latter including the extension of the internal estate access road, traffic calming measures, bicycle parking and site landscaping.
The plan for Shane, who primarily uses subcontractors on the company’s developments, is to have all works completed on the Cluain Lara housing scheme in about 12 months’ time.
Along with the general construction of buildings, Belville Building & Construction Galway Ltd also specialises in civil engineering works – an area in which Shane’s brother Alan applies his expertise for the business.
It helps the company to cover all bases as a leading residential construction and development firm out west and the latest move from Shane has saw him starting up another development venture this past December.
“It’s called PSG developments,” he said. “We haven’t started anything yet, but we’re going in with another builder there and our plan is to buy eight houses in Dangan and we’re going to build four and they’re going to build the other four.
“We’ll be hoping to start the plan in April or May. They’d be high-end houses in a good area of Galway which would be going for around the €1m mark.”
Indeed, things seem to be moving fast for this still relatively young business and it’s all a far cry from where Shane himself first started out in the construction game.
Having qualified from college as a Construction Manager back in 2009, the timing could not have been worse to try and immerse yourself within the Irish construction sector.
Like many young people in this country at the time, he took the decision to travel abroad and would end up flying over the Atlantic to take up full-time employment.
“Once I came out of college, there weren’t really too many options for me,” he explained. “So it was only by chance that I ended up in Canada. I actually planned on going to Australia, but I had a cousin in Canada over in a place called Fort McMurray which is a mining area in northern Alberta.
“They mine the oil out of the ground, so it’s in situ mining. Basically, there’s oil in the sand and it goes through a crusher and then they put it through a steaming process which separates it from the sand to the oil. I actually spent five years working out in Fort McMurray, you would never plan to be there five years.
“I worked for a geotechnical and concrete testing company, a role I initially fell into but quickly progressed within. We acted as an independent third party for oil companies, overseeing construction projects to ensure all works met regulatory standards. Our responsibilities included concrete and compaction testing, piling oversight, and comprehensive project monitoring and reporting.
“So I worked for them and, eventually, by the time I left there, I was fairly high up with them and I probably would have stayed on longer only for it being a tougher climate over there. You could have winters there where it’s -30F or -40F.
“Yeah, brutal. Very short days and you could have snow on the ground for five months of the year as well.”
After returning home to the warmer climate in 2018, Shane spent about a year working in Dublin before eventually making it to Australia and staying for a stint before travelling around South America and then coming back to Galway to set-up this business alongside his dad.
Belville Building & Construction Galway Ltd was born and, at this point in time, business is flourishing for the company, with the biggest challenges being those that are most common at present within the Irish construction sector.
“As I said, our biggest issue, probably like most contractors, is trying to keep on to your subcontractors,” said the company director.
“There aren’t enough people to do the jobs now, with the government pushing on with all these extra houses. The people are getting pulled in every direction because, before now, you could ring up your plumber and give him notice of a week, and he’d come.
Now, you could be waiting two or three weeks for a tradesperson to become available. Where a house might previously have been completed within eight or nine months, you’re now realistically looking at 13 or 14 months. Much of that comes down to delays between trades — and no matter how well you plan or organise, some waiting time is simply unavoidable. That’s the reality of the current market.”
Looking towards the months ahead for the business, Shane is keen to see the company continuing its steady growth trend and also further enhance its reputation as a leading residential construction and development firm in the Galway region.
“I’d be hoping by this time next year that we’d be out of this project in Athenry in Cluain Lara and that we’d have another job sorted out for the following year.
“We want to slowly expand the business. We are at a point now where we do need to decide if we want to take on more direct staff and go from 10 houses to 20 houses a year. We want to keep a nice steady increase there, but also keep control on it because you don’t want to overextend yourself either.
“At this moment in time, there’s such a demand on houses that I don’t see anything like it (a downturn) happening for the next couple of years anyway,” he concluded.
Belville Building & Construction Galway Ltd
Technology House,
Galway Technology Park,
Parkmore,
Co Galway.
H91 Y2WH
Tel: (087) 9166823
Email: [email protected]
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, June 2026, Vol 12 No 6
Belville Building & Construction, featured
