The Irish Times
About Daniel
Daniel J. Byrne is an Irish businessman , lawyer and sportsman. He’s the founder and driver of multiple large scale businesses in the fields of law (having founded a boutique commercial law firm), property (developed and traded several hundred million euro of commercial real estate) hospitality, FMCG and charitable projects.
Byrne also competed internationally in Powerlifting, being a multi-national record holder having earned a silver medal and national record in the bench press in the Commonwealth Powerlifting Championships held in Potchefstroom, South Africa in 2017. Byrne has also spent some of his life working pro bono as a missionary for the Franciscan Order in South Africa and is a director of the restorative justice charity Release.
Lifting the Myrdalsandur Stone at Vik in Iceland to earn Fullsterkur status https://youtu.be/GWOGw_Bmjqk
Biography
Education & Career
Byrne graduated from Franciscan College, Gormanston, County Meath, having been the winner of numerous academic awards, including the Father Bonaventure Wrafter Gold Medal for top academic results in his year and was also a winner of the Goethe Scholarship, having achieved highest marks in Ireland, out of nearly 10,000 students, in his national exams for German.
He attended University College Cork and University of Limerick where he received his LLB Hons.
He then trained as a solicitor with McCann Fitzgerald, a leading Dublin Law Firm, qualifying as solicitor in 2004 with commendations and distinctions in his final exams with the Law Society of Ireland.
Byrne retains a current Certificate of Good Standing with the Law Society of Ireland but retired from law in 2008 to concentrate on his growing business interests.
Byrne has extensive property interests and transacted several hundred million euro of property deals in Dublin city centre, including the development and sale of a €20million Student Accommodation Scheme. Byrne was the owner of the island, Duvillaun Beg, for a number of years.
In the field of FMCG he has rolled out brands and sold millions of units of product into large retailers,
Byrne is a business leader and has very close personal relationships with several significant business figures.
Charitable Works
Byrne worked as a pro bono lay missionary for the Franciscan Order in Southern Africa and had spent a significant amount of time with the well known Franciscan, Father Stan Brennan. Byrne, personally donated several million rand to Father Stan’s initiatives.
He also has maintained strong relations to this day with the Franciscan Order and also the Sons of Mary in Eastern Nigeria and has been a funder of the construction of two schools in Isiama in Abia state through his association with a local missionary there called Father Remigenus.
Byrne is an ongoing supporter and active member of Prison Fellowship in Northern Ireland which is an outreach programme for ex-prisoners, and has recently been happy to accept a nomination to the board of the restorative justice charity Release. He also regularly works in prisons as a volunteer for the Sycamore Tree program.
Other Endeavours
Byrne has a varied and significant sporting history, including several Irish Colleges Medals for Rugby, two blackbelts in Mugendo, having trained directly under martial arts legend, Professor George Canning, elite international level powerlifting, including several national records, and mountaineering, having climbed three of the Seven Summits and is currently training for an ascent of Mount Elbrus, Russia. Most recently and channeling his Norse ancestor Sitric Caech, after a year of intense training Byrne lifted a Fullsterkur stone in Iceland a feat that Snorri, the foremost author of the Norse Sagas said could only be achieved by one in a thousand Vikings. Byrne is also a keen boxer and enjoys sparring at his local boxing club in Westmeath where he is under the well known coach Milly Kelly.
Byrne has also travelled extensively having visited over 90 countries and is an oenophile.
Poetry (reading optional…..inflicting personal poetry is a crime of the utmost bad taste)
Crying in an apartment block
Battery hen lives of life's elite
Individual free-willed lemmings
Packed and boxed each evening from the street
Convention's tractor beam controls unseen
Wretched gulped sobs twist a core
Life questioned, a friend is there
Like waves, crashing, always more
Smudged makeup, snot and matted hair
She cries
Surely an ending has made her weep
"Dear June"...or a parent seized
Only a sudden death could cut as deep
A lover's slow decision has cut her free
She cries and cries
We all hear, some close windows
Others feel and cry, a quiet panic
Just let her stop her heaving lows
A rebirth of who she is, painful, but not tragic
She cries
The Fire under the Bridge
You see the steep steps I scale
Strong, certain, eyes on the summit
But you don’t see how narrow the steps are
Nor the heat of the flames into which I fear I will plummet
If I slip and fall (by cutting life’s rope)
You will say “he took on too much to cope”
If I summit, all muscle, sweat, steel and glory
You will never know my fear-soaked story
Just think I’m different and that I don’t feel
desperation
I do, but I keep clawing through the dirt to my destination
Amba
Shallow panting, lying flat with mangy coat
Taking respite in the curled-up corner of the vanquished
Strange for me to be hiding in the thorn bush with the goats
You pass by, shallow brow and hair swept back with mediocrity's varnish
Together you scuttle and look for my prints on the path into this tangle
With bovine stare lapping up my feats that turned to clay
Spectators, you grinned as my mane and broad skull squeezed through crushing mangle
Seemingly wise now in your cowardly convention, surprised you think this is your day
Deep breaths, meat and restoring sleep have re-anointed my sleek fur
Your fat cattle scent into my toothed mouth flows
For some nights now, from the bushes, two glowing embers and growling purr
And there, Look! Broad fresh prints hunting on a path, the path is yours
The Lawyer's Lie
Monogrammed cuffs emit glove soft hands onto flat paper.
Unweathered head pendulums his life across clause, line and time.
Remunerated entanglement in a dry morass slowly disengaged a heart.
Worn, slowly abraised, the collars of suit, bag and chair,
(am I here again?).
Turn over, turnover, turned over.
Blood bag empties drip by drip,
through booted feet.
Fresh faced (smell Mother's soap), he put his foot on ladder, looked up into cloud.
Voluminous time sheets by, (bleached pulp, not worth re-reading), destination colourless.
Took twenty flying years of stairs to stand on a six-foot plinth.
Choose your own medal, the Truth is wooden spoon, so lie.
Boilwash the tapestry.
Convention's unstoppable juggernaut.
Take your spoon and breathe in a park.
Let love remember you.
Father
Clean and crisp, Discipline's veil
fell on childrens' silent lips
A Rock upon which our house was built
A Saint Peter who never let us fall
Eternal like the clarion call
He was my father
A velvet hand in a glove of steel
Words between us didn't feel
It was when a lion died in our house
we first started to talk, quiet as a mouse
From some drab purgatory he called my name
Calling me to drink our cup of strength
and now when I waver at the lips of life's crater
and look down at my challenges, all poison and rapiers
I breathe in deep and dive in a full man
my father at my shoulder whispering
"You can".