Brian Punch retires

On friday, October 26th, a large continent descended on Limerick’s Castletroy Park to join the many staff there who wished to pay tribute to Brian Punch on his retirement. Executive Director ESB Networks, Johnny Shine, welcomed Brian, his wife Margaret and their children Claire, Kieran and Elaine to what was a very special event.

A proud Limerick man, Brian true to his roots, played rugby for Munster at schoolboy level. Leaving what might have been a promising career in rugby behind, Brian headed to UCD and the bright lights of Dublin in 1966 where he met up with Donal Keeshan, Johnny Griffin, Sean Wyse and Brian Smith (who sadly passed away in 1980).

Amazingly all of his group headed for ESB, Brian taking up his appointment in September 1970 as a Design Engineer in System Op. It was at this time also that Brian met his future wife Margaret, who was a Liverpudlian, so Brian became a familiar face at the North Wall for a time as he waited for the boat – sometimes having to call on his colleagues to do taxi services. After four years Brian moved to Distribution Department as a planning engineer – this was the start of a long career in the Networks end of ESB.

The next few years saw him move to Sligo, Kilkenny, Tralee, Waterford and then to Limerick as Regional Manager Mid West in 1995. In CCR Brian played a major role in developing the change agenda for ESB Customer Services Business Unit. He has played a huge role in the evolution of many of the major changes in organisation, systems and even categories. Area Restructuring, unitisation, the emergence of the NT category, moving from a Regional organisation to Business Lines and the move to focus on asset management.

In recent years Brian’s role was as Manager of the Performance Improvement Programme for ESB Networks. Getting the NITA programme underway with John Kirby and Tony Carroll was a huge exercise and one that I know Brian is justifiably proud of and is one of the most complex IT programmes ever undertaken in ESB.

Outside of ESB Brian has many interests including golf and we are sure he will continue to play a major role in whatever interests he is involved in. We wish Brian a happy retirement and Margaret and his family well for the future.