Dermot Gleeson
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Dermot Gleeson is a barrister, former Irish government advisor and businessman born in Cork, Ireland in 1949.
He holds B.A. and LL.M degrees and qualified as a barrister at the King's Inns, Dublin. His father was a Circuit Court Judge and some of his brothers work as barristers. Called to the Irish bar in 1970 he first practised outside of Dublin, Ireland's main legal centre, on the Cork Circuit. 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 of the government of Taoiseach John Bruton, serving as Attorney General. 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. In 2003 he was appointed ombudsman for the Diamond Trading Company (DTC), the marketing offshoot of diamond mining giant De Beers].
| Preceded by Eoghan Fitzsimons |
Attorney General of Ireland 1994 - 1997 |
Succeeded by David Byrne |
