A life at the bar
Barrister and Kilkerrin native Brendan Grehan reflects on his legal career
IN different circumstances, Brendan Grehan could have perhaps made a living as a gold miner in Australia.
The Kilkerrin man is one of Ireland’s top barristers. He reckons he has worked on “probably hundreds of murder trials” and has represented one side or the other in some of the country’s most publicised court cases of the last two decades, with the late Mayo farmer Padraig Nally and Gerard ‘The Monk’ Hutch among his past clients.
He was called to the bar in 1989, having spent two years studying to become a barrister at King’s Inns in Dublin after returning from Australia. “I was in Australia for a year. When I went, I met a fella out there who worked in the gold mines,” said Brendan Grehan, who grew up on the family farm in Kilkerrin, one of nine children of Marie and the late Thomas Grehan.
“He invited me to go out to the mines, but he said I’d need a truck licence. I actually had a truck licence from Chicago where I’d gone in previous summers. I was able to do, basically a theory test over there, and get my qualification recognised.
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