Sláinte! The Strawberry Beds Job

Dublin in the 1980s; a building site in the west of the city.
An Irish version of Auf Wiedersehen Pet
Summer 1984; the Irish economy is bankrupt and jobs are scarcer than hen’s teeth.
Sláinte! Tells the tale of seven lads on their uppers who get a hand up from foreman Mike Stone. They are all in one kind of trouble or another. The one thing that bonds them together is their need for the work, the money and somewhere to lay their weary heads at night.
The foreman has a hut that will save them money on bad, damp or too expensive digs. Reluctantly they move in together on the site on Martin’s Row in Chapelizod. An area close to Dublin’s famous Strawberry Beds. The one advantage is the comfort of the Mullingar House pub nearby.
Labourer Liam Kelly quickly becomes known among the lads as ‘the bird-bandit’ because his favourite hobby is chasing skirt. His dream is to someday have his own small crew. He has nothing going for him only a strong back and a quick wit. He has never worked on a building site before. He is escaping a miserable existence on a small uneconomic farm-holding in the west of Ireland.
Ted Hughes is a young inexperienced crane driver hoping to survive his first real job. His father’s small company from the Deep-Water quay in Sligo has gone broke due to an inept accountant. An awful lot is riding on his young shoulders. Kelly takes an immediate dislike to Hughes because as he sees it, ‘daddy’ has given him an unfair advantage in life.
Electrician Andy Harpur has left his hometown of Mountmellick in Co Laois to prove himself a man and win the respect of his girlfriend’s rich father. Nancy Wainwright’s father owns the largest hardware store in town and one hundred and fifty acres of prime land with a dairy herd worth thousands. All Harpur has to offer her is a grotty van and the title ‘self-employed.’ But as soon as Andy is off the scene, her father sets Nancy up with a rich distant cousin from America.
Vince Gilligan and Mark Gara are the oldest members of the crew. They are shuttering carpenters and hard men. Both have lost partners and wives due to drink and too much time away from home. Gara is from Drumshanbo in Co Leitrim. There is nothing to go back to there. Gilligan is from Limerick. But he won’t return because his wife has left him for another man and Gilligan can’t trust himself to keep his hands off him if they cross paths.
Steve Dempsey is an experienced banksman and slinger from troubled Darndale in North Dublin. Dempsey is in his mid-thirties, with two beautiful blue lady killer eyes shining out from under a tousled sandy-coloured head of hair that is usually all dust from site work. He is young Hughes’ banksman and helping Hughes survive his first job. Dempsey loves the crack and a pint, but he has marriage problems. He arrives home one evening to discover his wife, Celia has cut it out for Benalmadena in Spain.
Carpenter Leo Egan is sleeping rough in his van behind the wall of the Phoenix Park not far from where they are working. The site borders the park wall. He was living with his wife and one daughter in her father’s hotel in Portlaoise, but the old man, once a hard-working plant man, has turned to drink. Old age and ill-health have made him bitter. When Leo points this out to him one night over a few too many, he tells Leo to get out. Leo does just that and now must make enough money to support his wife and child or return to the hotel a beaten man.
Holding them all together is site foreman Mike Stone, nicknamed ‘Hamlet’ by the lads because he loves the slim Hamlet cigars as a mini-celebration after a successful concrete pour. Mike is the company director, along with his brother David, of Advanced Builders. Stone has his own issues. Things are not going well with his wife. And then David informs him that the company they are sub-contracted to might be going bankrupt. If it does, all their hard years will be flushed down the drain. And worse, there will be no wages for the lads.