Early and Private Life
Brian Cowen was born in Tullamore, County Offaly on 10 January 1960. He grew up at the family home in Clara. He is the son of May and Bernard Cowen, a former Fianna Fáil TD and Senator. The family owned a public house in Clara town, beside the family home. His father also worked as an auctioneer. Cowen often worked as a barman in his father's pub when he was growing up. He has two brothers – Christopher and Barry. His brother, Barry, is also involved in politics and is a TD for Laois Offaly. His other brother, Christopher, is a publican (who was found by taxation authorities to have failed to pay taxes), runs the family pub and is the oldest of the Cowen brothers. The old Cowen family home and pub are soon to be demolished to make way for a new development.
Cowen was educated at Clara National School, Árd Scoil Naomh Chiaráin (St. Ciaran's High School), located at Clara, County Offaly, and the Cistercian College of Mount St. Joseph in Roscrea, County Tipperary. He was twelve years old when he entered Mount St. Joseph College, as a boarder. After secondary school, he attended University College Dublin where he studied law. He subsequently qualified as a solicitor from the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, Dublin.
Cowen is married to Mary Molloy and they have two daughters.
He is a member of the Gaelic Athletic Association and continues to serve as president of Clara GAA club. He also played with the Offaly Gaelic football team in the early 1980s. Cowen likes to socialise with his constituents in some of the local pubs in his native Offaly. In May 2003, he took part in a charity CD project organised by The Brewery Tap pub in Tullamore. The CD featured 28 songs, including Cowen singing the Phil Coulter song, "The Town I Loved So Well".
In May 2007, Cowen told Jason O'Toole of Hot Press that, as a student, "I would say there were a couple of occasions when marijuana was passed around – and, unlike President Clinton, I did inhale. There wasn't a whole lot in it really".
Read more about this topic: Brian Cowen
Famous quotes containing the words early, private and/or life:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)