Mary Blyth talks career, leadership skills and becoming the businesswoman she is today
A good work place can be the makings of a young career and bring out the very best in people. Fiona Alston sits down with Mary Blyth, Partner at S&W Ireland, to discuss her career, leadership skills and the first steps that shaped the businesswoman she is today.
“My mom always used to say the only race in life you run is with yourself,” says Mary Blyth, Partner at S&W Ireland. “Sometimes the only thing you can control is what is happening inside your own front door. Sometimes the only thing you might be able to control that day is whether your sink is clear of washing up, and that’s fine. Pick your thing.”
Blyth has always worked in accounting, even when she travelled to Australia, while others were drawn into hospitality jobs she ended up back in an office setting. But as Blyth unravels her career path to me, I get it. She had a great start in the business so you can tell where the enthusiasm for the industry comes from.
Not only by having two supportive first bosses but also because she is a woman who knew what she wanted from her life, and she just went out there and made it happen.
All that experience she brings into her leadership at her position as Partner at S&W Ireland in Cork, her home town – she tells me she is “a very proud Cork person”. The Cork office deals in specialist tax, audit, outsourcing and business advisory services.
A good start
“I’m a child of the ‘80s, we all wanted jobs – so I did the foundation course in what is now MTU,” she tells me as we begin to talk through her work experience. Her first job being Parfrey Murphy Chartered Accountants owned by Seamus Parfrey and Noel Murphy.
“I worked with Seamus and Noel from the very start. I remember vividly my first week in the office, because I was Seamus’ first ever articles clerk at the time – I remember day three…I remember coming into him with the file in front of me, and he just looked over his glasses, and he said “that’s a fine mess you’ve made out of that,” and I literally burst into tears on the spot – I have spent the past probably 30 years trying to prove him wrong!”, she says with deep affection.
“That training I got from the first day of work has stayed with me the whole way through. It’s always about the client, it’s not about you,” she explains.
After completing her traineeship she stayed with the firm for a couple of years before setting sail for her Australian adventure where she ended up working in a shipping company then moved into AMP, an Australian banking firm, which gave her a different experience as she was pricing pension plans and the like.
But the Northern Hemisphere was calling and so was marriage so she returned home, this time to Scotland with her husband and a new job in the National Australia group before then joining British Energy, who are nuclear power generation for the UK, now owned by EDF France.
Return to the rebel county
When the opportunity came up, via her husband’s career, to return to Cork, of course they took it.
“I came home and had decided, having our first child at the time, and I was going to take some time out. I lasted about three or four weeks, I literally met Noel and Seamus from Parfrey Murphy on a Christmas night out on a Friday night. Seamus rang me on Monday and said, come in and talk to us. So I went back to Parfrey Murphy in 2003.”
She was then in a consultancy role doing “all the ad hoc client requirements and the ad hoc tax requirements, so things like revenue orders, business planning, finance applications, all that type, very much of a mixed bag, but always very kind of client focusing,” she says. “My job is managing risk for my clients.”
Back in the firm where she began her accounting career it’s where she stayed, raising her family and working her way up to becoming partner in Parfrey Murphy in 2021.
Digital before lockdown
Speaking of 2001, we discuss how Covid impacted the firm but it seems like the future proofing duo of Seamus and Noel made it a smooth transition when the country locked down.
“Fortunately, I worked with two people who were very forward looking – all our files were cloud based. So when covid happened – the lads walked out the door with a laptop, a new mobile phone and a new printer, and we saw each other, effectively, two years later,” she explains.
Blyth really loves her job, even before she tells me I know this because I can tell by the words she chooses when discussing it and the passion in her voice. “I consider myself very lucky, my job has allowed me to bring up my family. It’s allowed me to travel. It’s allowed me to come to work every day – most days, very happily. Where’s the downside?” she tells me.
“I get accused of being a proud parent a lot of the time, especially now in the bigger S&W family as such,” she says.
Parfrey Murphy was bought by MC2 Accountants in 2022, and then MC2 was bought by S&W Ireland in 2025. Blyth had remained a partner position throughout all the new iterations of her workplace.
“My team are just the crackers, they are so good, and they mind me so well, and I mind them, and most of them have been with us in excess of 10 years. I’d be lost without them,” she says. Following that up with “and I mean that really genuinely, not in a BS kind of way, they’re just super.”
Leadership reflections
Delving into her leadership style she says “I’m very flexible, for many things. At the end of the day, like you have to let a person do the best work they can do, and all you have to do then is just make the environment around them that supports that. Most people are doing the best that they can most of the time – if you start off with that as your premise, there’s no bother,” she says.
Back when Blyth had her second daughter, before working from home was commonplace, was when she first experienced this kind of leadership. “I was shattered, she was the child who didn’t sleep until she was nearly three years old, and I remember Noel coming into my office, and he said to me, “I think the best thing you can do is work from home – for the time being, that’s your default position,” I really valued that – it was just, ‘what can I do to support you’ – so I’ve always remembered that.”
She goes on to talk about the working dynamic of her team. “I need to know a lot about various different matters – I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll find somebody who will, and I think that’s the beauty of S&W as well, our experience pool has widened so much – now we’re working within a pool of almost 2000 employees.”
“Our clients work in multiple jurisdictions across the world, so I have that support for them, and I have that support for me, which is great. And the other thing that I have to do on a daily basis is I have to talk to people about financial matters who aren’t finance people, so you need to break it down for them and not talk down to them because they know their business way better than you do,” she explains.
One thing she highlights about some of her clients, that we could all do with hearing, is, “they have this business that’s working really hard, and then they don’t have the structure in place to mind themselves and mind their families.”
I wrap up the interview by asking her “what’s the dream?”, she replies, “as long as my family is healthy and happy, that’s the dream. You know, I could have it now, and we probably do.”
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