[Full text] You don't get much more theatrical than incoming President, Pierce Kent, so what more appropriate model than Shakespeare's Seven Ages of the Man, on which to hang this issue's "Unqualified Opinion".
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
The infant, Pierce Kent, was born Tanzania in 1951 where the hospital wards opened on to a verandah. A nurse, passing by where the young child lay, saw a hyena on its way out - driven away, says Pierce, by his new born "mewling and puking".
His parents are Irish - his father, a doctor specialising in tuberculosis was awarded the OBE for his rescue work on the Burma-Siam Railway. His mother, a Slattery, hailed from Tralee. He describes his childhood in Kenya as "fantastic" with nothing other than verandahs, sandy beaches, palm trees and pink gins.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
Creeping to school was not an option for the young Pierce. His mother ferried him to and from primary school on the back of her motorised bicycle. Unwillingness crept in, however, when he was dispatched as a boarder to Clongowes Wood. He describes the misery of his first year, separated from home and family, and persistently in the infirmary, a casualty of the Irish climate with which he was still unfamiliar. By second year, he had settled down and enjoyed school life tremendously thereafter being involved in the Debating Society and playing on the 1st XI Rugby team. After Clongowes, he studied for a Bachelor of Business Studies at Trinity College.
And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.
An early lover, he met his wife Annie and they married while he was still a student. He was 19, she was 17. "Annie was a phenomenal support in the early years." They lived first in a bedsit in Donnybrook, then a flat in Rathgar, then a house in Woodpark, Dundrum before moving to their current house in Mount Pleasant, Ranelagh in 1985. They have two children, Pierce Terence (25) is a chemical engineer and Jayne Leontia (23), a computer scientist. Annie took up acting when the children were older and Pierce is rightly proud of what she has achieved. She is bashful about her role in productions like The Committments, Widows Peak, and The Gambling Man. Twenty years after they married, Annie attended Trinity where she studied psychology, qualified in 1997, and was conferred with her degree on the same day as their daughter.
When did he decide to become a CA? "When I found out I could sell my train set for a profit!" he says. More seriously, he always wanted to be in business and decided during his second year at TCD that he would become an accountant.
Then like a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.
"Full of strange oaths" can only mean ACASSI which Pierce chaired in the late 1970s, having the distinction of being its first qualified chairman. He was subsequently the first Irish Secretary General of UnEAS (the Union of European Accountancy Students).He could not have done this, he admits, without the support of Coopers & Lybrand where he trained. He tried to get out of paying his Institute fee by arguing with Ben Lynch, that as ACASSI chairman he represented the students and could not be treated as a paid-up member. The Institute won the day with Pierce not being listed as a member until he paid his first sub.
And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.
You've guessed it - Pierce the Council Member and former Chairman of the Leinster Society. His involvement with the Institute has been long and consistent - from his days in ACASSI, through his Chairmanship of LSCA which he loved, to his present role as incoming President of the Institute. "It's my way of forcing communication with my peers", he explains. "Work for members in business can be insular in terms of exposure to the rest of the profession. Involvement with the Institute overcomes that." Work for Pierce, after his stint with Coopers & Lybrand (1973-1979) meant education. He has spent most of his adult working life with Griffith College, formerly Business & Accounting Training (BAT), but is now phasing out that involvement to develop other interests including a restaurant in Ballina, and a venture into environmental risk management.
So what does he think of Luas? He's in favour of the latest proposals. The most important thing is that government must commit themselves to the project and get it done. In particular, a link from the city to the airport is long overdue, he says. I couldn't resist asking an unrelated question about the anti-nuclear protests in Carnsore in the early 1970s, and, yes, he was there - squelching through the mud barefooted with a babe in arms, and hoping against hope that the photographers wouldn't catch him on film, and more importantly, if they did, that the folks at Coopers & Lybrand wouldn't see the evidence!
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well saved a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
This incoming President modestly suggests that he is now at the dawning of the sixth age "with spectacles on nose and pouch on side" but we, perhaps, know better. He's looking forward to retirement (within the next decade!) though, preferably in a warm climate like the south of France, where he would tend his vineyard producing endless bottles of Chateau Ceannt, while Annie raises exotic French poultry - their colourful feathers an appropriate complement to this most colourful of Institute presidents!
Accountancy Ireland Vol 30 No 3 June 1998
I joined Clongowes Wood with Pierce and have not seen him since, with the exception of once in the bar at the Shelbourn.
Dose anybody know how I can contact him?