Dermot Gleeson

This article is about the lawyer. For the BBC Governor, see Dermot Gleeson (BBC).

Dermot Gleeson is a barrister, former Irish government advisor and businessman born in Cork, Ireland in 1949. He is married with four children and lives in Dublin.

Educated in Blackrock College, Dublin, Gleeson holds B.A. and LL.M degrees and qualified as a barrister at the King's Inns, Dublin. His father was formerly a solicitor and barrister and was later appointed a Circuit Court Judge and some of his brothers (John and Michael another brother is a practising General practitioner Dr. Tim Gleeson) also work as lawyers (Senior Counsel). Called to the Irish bar in 1970 he first practised outside of Dublin, Ireland's main legal centre, on the Cork Circuit. In the early 1970s he was a part time lecturer in Constitutional Law at University College Cork. He then moved to the capital when he was appointed a Senior Counsel in 1979 when only 30 years old. He is believed to have been the youngest ever "silk" appointed anywhere in the common law world in modern times. (To put this into context, other noted barristers, who took silk at an early age, such as the late Australian Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies and one time British Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe were lauded when they became Queen's Counsel at 35 and 34 years of age respectively.)

Gleeson was Ireland's leading barrister in the 1980s and 1990s before he became a senior government advisor and then a businessman. From 1994–1997 he was chief legal advisor to the government of Taoiseach John Bruton, serving as Attorney General of Ireland. Gleeson is a Bencher of King's Inns and it is likely that he would have been appointed to high judicial office had he indicated an interest and left his lucrative practice. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the School of Law at University College, Dublin. In more recent years he has become well known for his business career. In 2000 he joined the board of Independent News and Media Plc as a non-executive director and in 2003 he was appointed Chairman of Ireland's largest bank Allied Irish Banks. His time in charge of AIB resulted in the enormous drops in the share price, leading to the infamous 'egging' incident at the May 2009 shareholder's meeting.^[1] In 2003 he was appointed ombudsman for the Diamond Trading Company (DTC), the marketing offshoot of diamond mining giant De Beers. In 2007 he was appointed chairman of the Governing Body of University College, Cork.

Gleeson is a former Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society, University College Dublin, and winner of the Irish Times National Debating Championship.

Gleeson attended the Bilderberg group meeting in Greece in 2009.^[2]

See also

• Auditors of the Literary and Historical Society (University College Dublin)

References

1. ^ http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103?currentPage=all
2. ^ http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html

External links

• http://lawlibrary.ie/members/barrister.asp?barID=72

Legal offices
Preceded by Eoghan Fitzsimons	Attorney General of Ireland 1994–1997	Succeeded by David Byrne

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Name	Gleeson, Dermot
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