2019 Annual Dinner

The Presidents reception welcomed the ‘Chain Gang’ - the Presidents of Insurance Institutes of Ireland, Isle of Man, Dublin, Sligo, Limerick, Cork, Galway, & Glasgow.

Also the representatives of the ABI, Chartered Secretaries, Lloyds, Accountants, BIBA, Loss Adjusters, Law Society plus our own Past Presidents

The President & his guests followed the lone piper who piped them into the room.

The evening was introduced by the MC - Colin Barkley- advising the 450 people attending that the theme of the night - would be a ‘Cookie’ night - the nickname of the flamboyant President.

The President then welcomed all which was to be a different evening with a varied programme.

Our Patron - Her Majesty the Queen - was toasted first and followed by the Presidents remarks and toast to the CII. The reply toast to the IINI was given by the Vice President of the CII - Grant Scott. At the end of Grant’s reply - he presented our own John Laverty & Gary Ennis - with their CII Distinguished Service Medals.

A toast to our guests was proposed by the IINI Deputy President - Ashley Murphy.

Before Grace was given by Leslie Gillanders ( Council member ) our President gave a Charity Focus - which included a UTV Video ( of 20 years ago ) of himself & Sean Fox ( Dublin Institute) being interviewed by a young Pamela Ballantine as they trained for the New York marathon There was a health warning with this part of the night including photos of Brian & Sean on the front of Runners World & Brian at the finish post.

We had 7 prizes for the draw kindly donated by Axa, ABC,Willis Towers Watson, Fusion, Sedgwick, ATG & Burgoyne

After the meal Annali-Joy Thornicroft ( Insurance Charities ) presented the Charity Shield to the IINI charity representative - Fiona Cambridge - for the local Charity doing the most for the Charities in the year to March 2018

This was followed by a new IINI award - the Albert Gillespie award in honour of Albert who was Toastmaster to the Institute for 65 years - His son & daughter - Garth & Nicola presented the awards to Gary Ennis & Mikala Owens for their work with organising the dinner over the years

A talk on ‘ Celebrating Success’ was given by Lizzie Colvin - a Hockey Ireland World Cup silver medal winner in July in London - Ireland went into the competition ranked 15 out of 16 and against all odds got to the Final winning the silver medal

Annali-Joy then drew the 7 winners of the Charity draw

Our MC - Colin Barkley was in charge of the auction of 3 pieces - a montage of 3 famous Northern Ireland soccer goals - a montage of Ireland’s rugby grand slam win in Twickenham last year ( including the match programme ) plus an item of the Titanic - signed by the youngest survivor of the tragic event - Millvina Dean - kindly donated by the CII CEO - Sian Fisher

The draw & auction raised over £10,000 to be split - 50% to the Insurance Charities - with the other 50% being split between 3 African Charities - ran locally - Ryan’s House / Abaana & My fathers house.