Brimful of buying barristers

WHILE they are certainly well placed to do so, it's not customary for members of the legal profession to pop from the Four Courts…

WHILE they are certainly well placed to do so, it's not customary for members of the legal profession to pop from the Four Courts into the multi.

Ormond Centre on Dublin's quays. So the preponderance of barristers in the centre's gallery last Wednesday evening was rather puzzling until family associations were explained.

Why did the gathering include Attorney General Dermot Gleeson - fresh from the day's High Court dismissal of a challenge to the divorce referendum result - with his wife Doreen? Well, Mr Gleeson's brother, barrister John Gleeson, is married artist Zita Reihill, who was holding her first exhibition in the gallery.

Reihill used to run her own company manufacturing hand painted costume jewellery but went back to art college as a mature student, graduating last June.

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The change of career, she explains, arose in part "because I don't think I'm great at business" - a strange admission from the of Tedcastle boss John Reihill.

Her father and his wife, publisher Ann Reihill, were among the company they flew back from Ireland for a week's break from rain drenched Spain to where they're now returning.

Also spotted among the keen picture buyers (two thirds of the total on show sold within a couple of hours) were Woodchester's Robert, Power, yet another barrister, Bill Shipsey, and emigre Tony Sexton.

Mr Sexton, who will be remembered as one of TCD's most colourful undergraduates during the mid 1970s, has lived in Saudi Arabia for the past 14 years.

After unexpectedly seeing Zita Reihill again for the first time in almost two decades, last night he had a second surprise when his parents, Peter and Sue Sexton, threw a 40th birthday party for him in their north Dublin home.