Brian Curtin - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Curtin is the only child of a builder and his wife, who had emigrated from near Tralee in county Kerry to south London where Brian was born and raised, attending St Joseph's Roman Catholic Primary School, Putney Bridge Road, Wandsworth, as well as the Salesian College, in Surrey Lane, Battersea. In the 1970s he attended Trinity College Dublin, and qualified from King's Inns in 1976. As a barrister he worked on the Kerry Babies Tribunal, and developed a high profile in Kerry.

Curtin married Miriam McGillicuddy, a solicitor and later mayor of Tralee. They have one daughter, and separated in c.1998. Curtin was involved in amateur drama, and presented a Sunday morning show on Radio Kerry. He was politically active in Fianna Fáil, and later the Progressive Democrats, for which party stood unsuccessfully for election to Tralee Town Council.

Curtin was appointed to the Garda Complaints Appeals Board in May 2001; to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal in August 2001; and to the circuit court in November 2001. He heard cases on the Southwestern Circuit, encompassing his home county of Kerry.

Read more about this topic:  Brian Curtin

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)

    We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.
    Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)

    My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)