John Bruton - Early and Personal Life

Early and Personal Life

John Gerard Bruton was born to a wealthy, Catholic farming family in Dunboyne, County Meath and educated at Clongowes Wood College.

Oliver Coogan notes in his Politics and War in Meath 1913–23 that Bruton's granduncle was one of the farmers in south Meath who prevented the traditionally Anglo-Irish ascendency hunt from proceeding in the area during the Irish War of Independence.

Bruton later went on to study at University College Dublin where he received an honours Bachelor of Arts degree and qualified as a barrister from King's Inns, but never went on to practice law. Bruton was narrowly elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1969 general election as a Fine Gael TD for Meath. At the age of 22 he was the fourth youngest ever member of the Dáil up to that point. He more than doubled his vote in the general election of 1973, which brought Fine Gael to power as part of the National Coalition with the Labour Party. Bruton was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry & Commerce and to the Minister for Education, by the National Coalition in 1973. He remained in office until 1977.

He is married to Finola Bruton and has four children.

Read more about this topic:  John Bruton

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

    A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.
    Thomas Mann (1875–1955)

    In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)

    I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)