Hotelier Bill Kelly shares his bond with his six daughters for Father's Day

With six daughters aged from 16 to 27, Bill Kelly is blessed among women – not to mention make-up and hair straighteners as well.

“The first serious decision I had to make as they started to touch the teenage years was to get my own bathroom, because you couldn’t get a look in,” laughs the hotelier behind the award-winning Kelly’s resort and spa in Wexford.

“Once we got that sorted, I was in a more comfortable position.”

Irish Country Living is meeting with Bill and his eldest daughter, Laura, who joined the family business this year, making her the fifth generation to work at the iconic resort that has hosted Irish holiday makers since 1895.

As it turns out, it happens to be Laura’s birthday – a day clearly etched on her proud dad’s mind.

“Laura arrived about two or three weeks after her due date, so she was stubborn from the outset,” he smiles.

“Hey,” she interjects.

“But I remember leaving the hospital,” continues Bill, “and as we got into the car, the song Tell Laura I Love Her came on the radio. It was such a coincidence. Though I also remember that I didn’t want Laura to wake, so I was breaking all the lights on the way back down to Wexford.”

From the outset, Laura was “totally independent”.

“She didn’t really need parents, she just happened to have parents,” Bill jokes. “She walked before she was 10 months old.”

“Apparently, he used to put sweets at the end of the corridor and make me try to walk to them,” elaborates Laura.

“Though mom would say he’d just blink an eye and I’d have crawled over and be halfway through them.”

While Bill credits his French-born wife Isabelle – who he met while studying at the prestigious École Hôtelière de Lausanne – with holding the fort at home, he admits he was the easier parent to coerce, especially during the teenage years.

Though he obviously held a card or two up his sleeve when it came to certain issues.

“As the girls said to me: ‘Dad, I’m 18 now, if I want to get a tattoo, I can get a tattoo,’ and I said: ‘I agree, absolutely, no problem,’” he says. “‘But if you’re that independent, it means you support yourself in Dublin, you rent your own accommodation and you pay for your college fees. So if you want to cover all those things yourself, then get yourself tattooed. But if I’m doing that, you go by my rules.’”(Though Laura did manage to broker a belly-button piercing at 16; a trend many of her sisters subsequently followed.)

Having grown up with five sisters and one brother, being outnumbered never phased Bill. What still amazes him, however, is the “variety of personalities you have under the one roof”.

Bill and Laura agree that they are most alike. “The guests have said: ‘She’s like your female clone,’” says Bill.

“Thankfully, I have more hair,” laughs Laura.

Next up is Clara (25), a food science graduate who works for Kerry Group and who Bill describes as utterly determined no matter what she puts her mind to.

“She ran her first marathon when she was 18, another one when she was 19, another one when she was 20,” he says.

Then comes Eva (23) who studied commerce and Italian. “She’s deemed to be quiet on the surface, but, seemingly when she’s not in the house, she’s the wild one,” laughs Bill.

Anna (21) has just finished her finals in marketing and hopes to go to Canada next year.

“Everything for Anna is spelled with ‘f-u-n,’” says Bill. “You ask Anna when her exams are starting and she says: ‘I’m not sure when they are starting, but they finish on such a date.’”

Faye (19) is the “beating heart” of the family. Faye has Down’s syndrome, but her sense of joy is infectious.

“She’s so happy,” smiles Bill. “Even this morning, Isabelle said to me: ‘Can you imagine being that happy all the time?

“She certainly has changed our lives for the better and given us an awareness of unconditional love. And there’s nobody more beautiful than Faye in our eyes.”

The baby of the family is Grace, though Bill describes her as “16 going on 21”.

“She has the challenge of being younger than Faye and yet being Faye’s older sister,” says Bill. “She’s been wonderful and very caring with Faye and she’s very mature for her age.”

While Bill jokes he thought having six children would provide cheap labour for the hotel, he never wanted to push the girls into the business. Indeed, Laura completed a degree in commerce and Italian before studying at Lausanne.

“What was interesting was that Laura came to me and said: ‘I want to go into it,” he says. “That’s very important that they find their own route of what they want to do, rather than what we think they should do.”

As part of her degree, Laura gained experience in a number of hotels worldwide, from the Grand Hyatt in Singapore – with a 400-seater restaurant where she found herself dashing between nine different kitchens at a time – to the trendy Standard hotel in New York, where she was a restaurant manager.

“But I thought, why am I doing this somewhere else when I could be doing this at home?” she smiles about her return to the family business.

“As well as responsibilities in accommodation and HR, she is also starting to make a subtle stamp on things, such as introducing craft beers and a new cocktail menu.

For Bill, having Laura helps him to keep his finger on the pulse of what people want and he hopes there will be ample opportunity if any of the other girls wish to follow on, whether in the hotel or his latest development, Kelly’s Cafe in Drinagh.

Surprisingly, however, there is a strict rule that nobody talks about the hotel at home. Clearly, that time with Isabelle and the girls is sacrosanct to Bill, and his most precious moments are when they are gathered around the dinner table.

“As the years go on, there is always somebody away, somebody doing exams, somebody studying, so it’s challenging enough trying to keep the family together,” he says. “Those moments are really valued.”

One last question though: how does a father of six daughters deal with potential suitors?

“We have a long lane down to the house full of potholes,” he laughs. “It’s very important we keep it that way.”