Excelling at a Young Age
It would be accurate to say Peter Sutherland is a bulldog of a man with wide strong shoulders having played a pivotal role in the UCD team as a prop when he was younger. He played for Lansdowne and was captain there as well. A tough, domineering forward, his nose was broken several times. His great regret was that he wasn’t picked for Ireland (it’s one of two - the other is that he wasn’t president of the European Commission). School, college and rugby - they were the three main passions of his youth. Even now, after all the fortune he has accumulated, his home is in Donnybrook, just a mile from each, he also has a flat in South Kensington and a house near Marbella.
Sutherland was always clearly a rising star at the Dublin Bar, combining a gregarious nature with a competitive streak and impressive intellect. But life as a barrister was never going to be enough. Sutherland was cut out for big-time business and politics, for the hazy interface of wealth and power. Back in 1981 Garret FitzGerald made him Ireland’s Attorney-General. He was just 35 - the youngest in the country’s history.
Back then was also a time of great political turbulence - and violence. He was heavily involved in the first extradition case of an IRA member to Northern Ireland. “He’s totally opposed to physical force - he’s not a traveller,” said one of his close colleagues.
In 1985 he became Ireland’s European commissioner. It was a key moment. “Going to Brussels heralded the most significant part of my life,” he said. He was completely pro-European and became a close colleague and friend of the French EC president Jacques Delors. He was architect of the EU’s new competition policy and to his enormous pride, he was the first commissioner to be given the Gold Medal of the European Parliament during his tenure.
Sutherland never landed the position he most desired however. Three times he was put forward as a candidate for EC president and on each occasion he was declined. What sets Sutherland apart from the rest is that he doesn’t let setbacks get in the way of whichever goal he has set his sights on. Only time will tell what challenge will come next for the man who has achieved so much already.
