TWO senior members of the Brown Thomas management team have left the Dublin department store in the last two weeks.

Mr Ian Galvin, a senior buyer in women's fashion, left two weeks ago and last Friday saw the departure of Mr John Heather, the store's general manger.

Their departures are not connected, according to Mr Paul Kelly, chief executive of the Brown Thomas Group, which includes A Wear.

Mr Kelly dismissed a suggestion that the two men's decisions to leave were connected with a poorer than expected performance by the store's women's fashion section since the £15 million relaunch of Brown Thomas in February 1995. All sections of the store, including women's fashion, are doing very well, according to Mr Kelly.

Mr Galvin and Mr Heather have left to pursue other interests, Mr Kelly said. Neither was available for comment yesterday and both were said to be abroad. Mr Galvin is understood to have nine years' service with the group and Mr Heather eleven years.

Last December, Ms Deidre Kelly, the managing director of the successful A Wear subsidiary, was promoted to the position of group fashion director of the entire group, including the flagship Brown Thomas store in Grafton Street, Dublin.

Last year's relaunch involved Brown Thomas moving across Grafton Street into the refurbished Switzers building, and the dropping of the Switzers name. The new store has done extremely well since the revamp, said Mr Kelly, who dismisses suggestions that the new store had not performed as well as expected.

"We have had an unbelievable Christmas and will have a good January," he predicted. All the areas of the store which have been redeveloped so far are doing well, he said. "They are doing more business than the equivalent departments in the old Brown Thomas and Switzers put together," he said.

There was mixed reaction to the reopening of Brown Thomas women's wear section after the refurbishment last September. Ms Kelly is expected to try to broaden the appeal of the women's wear section, which is heavily focused on expensive designer fashions.

The redevelopment programme will be completed within six months. There are still two major projects to be completed; the refurbishment of the basement and the third floor, according to Mr Kelly.

Brown Thomas is owned by the Canadian millionaire Mr Galen Weston, whose family, controls Associated British Foods, the owners of a number of Irish supermarket chains including Quinnsworth and Penneys and Stewarts/Crazy Prices in Northern Ireland.

Mr Weston acquired Brown Thomas in 1970 and in 1990 the company acquired the Switzer Group. As a privately owned company, Brown Thomas does not publish its financial details, but at the time of the relaunch last February Mr Weston acknowledged in an interview on financial matters that to date his involvement in the group had been a "labour of love".