Columba Press and Currach Go into Liquidation

It is with great sadness that the Directors and Staff of Columba have to announce that The Columba Book Service Ltd (Columba Press and Currach Press) has gone into liquidation.

Columba went into examinership in May 2016 in order to protect the jobs of our employees while we sought new investment. Unfortunately, we have been unable to secure the new investment that would be needed to return the company to profitability and place us on a sound financial footing for the future.

Columba Press was founded in 1984 by Sean O’Boyle to be an independent religious book publisher. Over the years our books have contributed greatly to both church and society in Ireland and beyond. Our mission statement was to produce ‘Thoughtful Books for a Thinking Church’.

As an independent publisher Columba often provided a platform for authors who would otherwise not have been published. We are proud that as a publisher we facilitated the promulgation of ideas that others preferred to silence.

The company is very proud of the canon of books that we have produced, of our authors, and of the fact that over the years we have published for Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter. We have always strived to be a good corporate citizen of this Republic.

The Currach Press imprint was started as our general list and has published non-fiction titles of the highest quality and production values.

The directors and staff of Columba Press and Currach Press would like to thank all those in the book business in Ireland, the UK, and internationally who have supported us over the years. To our authors, distributors, printers and retailers we wish you all the very best for the future. To our fellow indigenous Irish publishers we wish you every success as you fight the good fight to get our own local authors onto bookshelves in the face of fierce competition from large international companies.

Finally, we would like to thank our readers who have supported this company and our authors over the years. We are sad that it has all come to an end but we hope that the thoughtful books will continue to emerge.

Fearghal O’Boyle

The Columba Book Service Ltd.