Meet the President!
Author:
Timothy Quin
[Fulltext] The Quin family came from Co. Longford. My ancestors were seafarers and farmers until the end of the last century when my grandfather left Edgeworths-town to embark on the new career of accountancy, which he proposed to practice in that burgeoning centre of commerce in the north, the city of Belfast. I still have the certificate recording that Stewart Blacker Quin passed his Final Examination on 22 December 1892 for admission to the fledgling ICAI.
My grandfather formed his own firm in 1895 later admitting William Moore Knox as a partner. He went on to chair the Belfast Society of Chartered Accountants and to serve as President of the Institute from 1917 to 1920.
My father, Herbert Quin, was admitted to the Institute in 1913 but his preferred profession was the law. Called to the Irish Bar in 1916, he "did a circuit" as a practising barrister, before concluding that, because he was the only son who could succeed his father in the family firm, he should abandon the Bar and so he joined his father as a partner in 1919. Despite the loss of his sight in the 1920s, he too chaired the Belfast Society and later served as a Senator in the Northern Ireland parliament.
The lure of wig and gown
As a youngster, finding his wig and gown in our attic sparked off my own ambition to be a barrister. When I left school in 1960 I found that to become a student of the Inn of Court you had to have a degree - in anything other than Law. The Bar Council did not believe in so-called relevant degrees. They wanted their students to have a broad education - the law they needed they would learn as students of the Bar. So I spent three years as a B.A. student at Queen's University, at the end of which I bought a three month return ticket to Canada and the US and learned more travelling on Greyhound buses and staying in YMCA hostels than I had in three years at Queen's.
By then it had dawned on me that, of his five sons, I was the only one whom my father might expect to succeed him and, although he never asked me to, I was conscious of how he had changed career to follow his own father so I decided to do the same - out of filial love and duty rather than a passion for the accountancy profession. The only condition I made was that I should go back to Queen's part-time, whilst serving my Articles, to graduate in Law, which I did in 1967. My father died the following year and after qualifying in 1969, I returned to Belfast in 1970 to join Atkinson & Boyd and was delighted to be admitted to the partnership in 1972.
Ulster Society
My mentor at A&B, Purvis Bruce, a former Institute President, urged me to participate in the Ulster Society, which I chaired in 1983-84. District Society involvement led to my appointment as Joint Secretary of the Institute, and then to election as a member of Council. I retired from Council in 1986 to attend more fully to the firm which shortly became part of Touche Ross, now Deloitte & Touche.
In 1989, with encouragement from Cecil Donovan, another Past President, I stood again for Council. So, apart from a three year break, I have been kicking around Council for almost 20 years - and I have taken pride and pleasure in every aspect of my work on Council and its committees during that period.
When I first became involved with the Institute my interests were intensely technical. Now I find management issues much more interesting, probably because I no longer have the intellectual capacity for technical complexities. I am still learning about management and enjoy every opportunity of new experience, which is why I welcomed my recent appointment to the Board of Progressive Building Society, where I joined another Past President whom I greatly respect, namely Noel Stewart.
Happily married to Wendy, I have three children, none of whom has shown any interest in either accountancy or the Bar. My interests outside the profession include skiing (once a year), good food and wine (as often as possible) and Morgan sports cars, a new one of which I ordered in 1997 with delivery promised for 2002 at the earliest. I suppose the Morgan is my hope for the new Millennium!
Accountancy Ireland Vol 31 No 3 June 1999