1958
Agricultural drainage
Dan McNally starts out in agricultural drainage in County Monaghan.
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A family business since 1958
Our story.
From agricultural drainage and railway decommissioning to wind turbine decommissioning, McNally’s has moved with Ireland’s changing infrastructure.
Where it started
Dan McNally started in 1958, in agricultural drainage, then railway decommissioning. The office is still on Dawson Street. McNally’s is the EU and global company in the Forsyth of Denny group.
1960s
Railway decommissioning
The company moves into railway decommissioning, with bigger machines and harder logistics.
1972
The first crane
The first crane is bought, and the company moves into crane hire.
1984
Dan McNally Limited
The business is incorporated as Dan McNally Limited.
1996
Heavy cranes and lift engineering
A new generation of management takes the company into heavy cranage and specialist lift engineering.
1999
First wind project
A 400-tonne crane erects 600kW Vestas turbines. It is the beginning of more than 25 years in wind energy.
2001
First crane and installation package
McNally’s offers its first combined crane and installation package to a wind turbine manufacturer.
2005
Integrated wind work
Sister company Windhoist is set up to combine heavy cranage with mechanical and electrical installation, so one contract covers the cranes and the erection crews. Around the same time, the team decommissions eight turbines at Drumlough Hill, Co. Donegal, including site management and civil works.
2008
First cranes in Australia
McNally’s cranes go to work in Australia for the first time, alongside sister company Windhoist, the first in the country to offer both the cranes and the crews to erect turbines (Access Briefing, 2008).
2011
Industry recognition
Cranes & Access profiles the team’s experience on difficult Irish and UK wind sites and its integrated approach to turbine work. Source: Cranes & Access, August/September 2011, pp. 16–23 (PDF).
2016
Forsyth of Denny joins the group
The group acquires Forsyth of Denny, the crane hire company based in Denny, Stirlingshire (Vertikal, 2016).
2025–2026
Bellacorick decommissioning
McNally’s cranes take down the last turbines at Bellacorick, Co. Mayo. It was Ireland’s first commercial wind farm and had generated since 1992. The site is redeveloped as Oweninny Wind Farm Phase 3.
2026
Carrigdangan installation
A crane and installation package to install three Nordex Delta4000 turbines at Carrigdangan wind farm, Co. Cork.
Today
Wind decommissioning and heavy lift
McNally’s supports the full wind lifecycle, from installation, major component exchange, facilitating repowering and decommissioning through to end-of-life dismantling and component recycling, with mobile crane capacity up to 700 tonnes.
6,150+
Wind turbines erected globally
More than 6,150 wind turbines erected, from Ireland and the UK to Australia, Morocco and the Falklands.
Machine firsts
Firsts in Ireland and the UK.
Machines and methods McNally’s brought to Ireland and the UK first. Where a trade press report backs a claim it is linked; the rest are the company’s own account and have not been independently verified.
- 1998Liebherr LTM 1400Ireland’s biggest crane at the time
- 2001Demag TC 3300Ireland’s biggest crane at the time
- 2003Favelle FavcoIreland’s first telescopic crawler crane
- 2004Liebherr LTM 1500 with Y-guy technologyIreland’s first 500t Liebherr
- 2005Demag TC 2800The first in Ireland
- 2006Liebherr LTR 1100The first in the British Isles, a 100t telescopic crawler (Vertikal, 2006)
- 2007Terex-Demag TC 2800-1Placed the largest precast beams ever installed in Ireland: five 135t, 45m beams on the Limerick Southern Relief Road
- 2008Terex-Demag AC 500The first and only new one in the UK and Ireland
- 2008Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1The first 1,200t crane in the UK and Ireland, and the first anywhere to work on a wind farm (Cranes & Access, 2011; Cranes & Access, 2008)
- 2008Wumag WT 1000 103m platformThe first 103m MEWP in the UK and Ireland, and the world’s tallest at the time (Access Briefing, 2008)
- 2010Liebherr LG 1750The first new one in the UK and Ireland
- 2010Liebherr LTR 11200The first in the UK, Ireland and Australia, shipped to Australia in 2010 (Cranes & Access, 2011; Vertikal, 2010)
- 2014Liebherr LTM 1750The first in Ireland
- 2015Crane hoist rope tensioning systemDesigned in house for decommissioning, a world first
Then and now
From low-loaders to cranes.
The low-loaders are how a heavy crane reaches a difficult site.
On site
Past work.
Wind turbine installations, heavy lifts and vessel work from the project archive.
From the archive
Read the 2011 Cranes & Access feature.
An eight-page industry article covering McNally’s wind experience, crane strategy and approach to difficult sites. Fleet references in the article are historical.