2021 IACBA Conference
SPEAKERS
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Paul Gallagher SC
Attorney General of Ireland
The Hon. Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell
Chief Justice
Judge Bays Larsen
Vice-President of the Court of Justice
Judge Siofra O’Leary
Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights
Niamh Nic Shuibhne
Professor
Michael McDowell SC
Michael Conlon SC
Emily Farrell SC
Anthony Lowry BL
Paul Gallagher SC
Attorney General of Ireland
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Paul Gallagher, Attorney General, has been practising in the Irish Bar for 42 years. He was appointed a senior counsel in 1991 and a Bencher of the King’s Inns in 2005. He is a former vice-chair of the Irish Bar Council. He has lectured and tutored in law in University College Dublin and the King’s Inns and lectures and writes on a range of legal issues. He has degrees in law (University College Dublin, King’s Inns, Cambridge University), and in history and economics (University College Dublin). He practices widely in the areas of commercial law, European law and public law. He is an adjunct professor of law at University College Dublin, a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and a Fellow of the International Society of Barristers. He was Ireland’s nominee to the arbitration and conciliation panels of the International Centre of Settlement of Investment Disputes (1997–2007). He served as an observer on the High-Level Advisory Group for the Future EU Justice Policy 2007–2008 representing the UK, Cyprus and Malta. He is a director of the Irish Centre for European Law and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International and European Affairs. Paul Gallagher was Attorney General of Ireland between 2007 and 2011. Paul Gallagher was as re-appointed Attorney General in June 2020.
Paul Gallagher SC
Attorney General of Ireland
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Paul Gallagher, Attorney General, has been practising in the Irish Bar for 42 years. He was appointed a senior counsel in 1991 and a Bencher of the King’s Inns in 2005. He is a former vice-chair of the Irish Bar Council. He has lectured and tutored in law in University College Dublin and the King’s Inns and lectures and writes on a range of legal issues. He has degrees in law (University College Dublin, King’s Inns, Cambridge University), and in history and economics (University College Dublin). He practices widely in the areas of commercial law, European law and public law. He is an adjunct professor of law at University College Dublin, a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and a Fellow of the International Society of Barristers. He was Ireland’s nominee to the arbitration and conciliation panels of the International Centre of Settlement of Investment Disputes (1997–2007). He served as an observer on the High-Level Advisory Group for the Future EU Justice Policy 2007–2008 representing the UK, Cyprus and Malta. He is a director of the Irish Centre for European Law and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International and European Affairs. Paul Gallagher was Attorney General of Ireland between 2007 and 2011. Paul Gallagher was as re-appointed Attorney General in June 2020.
The Hon. Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell
Chief Justice
Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell was appointed the 13th Chief Justice of Ireland on the11th October 2021, by the President of Ireland, His Excellency Mr. Michael D. Higgins. Mr. Justice Donal O'Donnell was born in Belfast and educated at St Mary's C.B.S., University College Dublin (B.C.L.), The Honorable Society of King's Inns (B.L.) and the University of Virginia (LL.M). Mr. Justice O'Donnell was called to the Bar of Ireland in 1982, commenced practice in 1983 and was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1989. In 1995, he was appointed a Senior Counsel and has practised in all of the Courts of Ireland, in the Court of Justice of the European Union (C.J.E.U.) and in the European Court of Human Rights (E.Ct.HR). Mr. Justice O'Donnell was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in 2010. He was a member of the Law Reform Commission from 2005 to 2012. Lectures he has delivered include the John Kelly lecture (U.C.D), the Brian Walsh lecture (I.S.E.L.), the Brian Lenihan lecture (T.C.D), the Dan Binchy lecture (Brehon Law School) and the keynote address at a conference in the University of Limerick to mark the 80th anniversary of the Constitution of Ireland. He has published articles on a variety of legal topics in publications including the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, the Irish Jurist, the Dublin University Law Journal, the Judicial Studies Journal, and has contributed to volumes of essays on legal issues. He was a director of Our Lady's Hospice from 2009 to 2014. He was a Council of the Irish Legal History Society from 2018 to 2021 and is now a Joint Patron of the Society. He is also an Honorary member of the Society of Legal Scholars. Mr. Justice O’Donnell has been a Bencher of the Honourable Society of the King's Inns since 2009 and is an Honorary Bencher of Lincoln’s Inns. As Chief Justice, Mr. Justice O’Donnell is a member of the Council of State, the Presidential Commission, Chair of the Board of the Courts Service and Chair of the Judicial Council.
Judge Bays Larsen
Vice-President of the Court of Justice
Born 1953; awarded degrees in political science (1976) and law (1983) at the University of Copenhagen; official at the Ministry of Justice (1983-85); Lecturer (1984-91), then Associate Professor (1991-96), in Family Law at the University of Copenhagen; Head of Section at the Advokatsamfund (Danish Bar Association) (1985-86); Head of Section (1986-91) at the Ministry of Justice; called to the Bar (1991); Head of Division (1991-95), Head of the Police Department (1995-99) and Head of the Law Department (2000-03) at the Ministry of Justice; Representative of the Kingdom of Denmark on the K-4 Committee (1995-2000), the Schengen Central Group (1996-98) and the Europol Management Board (1998-2000); Judge at the Højesteret (Supreme Court) (2003-06); Judge at the Court of Justice since 11 January 2006; Vice-President of the Court of Justice since 8 October 2021.
Judge Siofra O’Leary
Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights
Síofra O'Leary is the Judge elected in respect of Ireland at the European Court of Human Rights. She was appointed in 2015 and in December 2019 was elected President of the Fifth Section.
Prior to joining the European Court of Human Rights, Judge O’Leary worked for almost two decades at the Court of Justice of the European Union, acting as a référendaire for two Irish and one Italian judge and later running part of that Court’s Research Directorate.
In parallel to her work at both European courts, Judge O’Leary is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges where she has taught LLM courses on EU law and the individual, EU Social Law and Policy, as well as participating in an annual judicial workshop. She served on the Editorial Board of the Common Market Law Review and is now a member of both its Advisory Board and the Board of the Irish Centre for European Law. In 2016 she was elected an Honorary Bencher of the Honorable Society of King’s Inns.
A graduate of University College Dublin and a postgraduate of the European University Institute in Florence, where she prepared her doctorate, Judge O’Leary was previously the Assistant Director for the Centre of European Legal Studies at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, a Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University College Dublin, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cádiz, Spain and a Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. She is the author of two books entitled The Evolving Concept of Community Citizenship (Kluwer, 1996) and Employment Law at the European Court of Justice (Hart Publishing, 2001) and has published extensively in academic journals and legal monographs on the protection of fundamental rights in EU law and under the ECHR, EU employment law, the free movement of persons and services and EU citizenship generally.
Niamh Nic Shuibhne
Professor
Niamh Nic Shuibhne is Professor of European Union Law at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently the Law School’s Director of Research and one of the Joint Editors of the Common Market Law Review. Her research examines questions of substantive EU law from a constitutional perspective, with a particular focus on principle-based analysis of free movement law and European Union citizenship. She recently completed an extended project on the legal framework underpinning equal treatment for EU citizens, funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2016-2019). Her current work explores the integrity of the EU legal system in a wider sense, with specific focus on the concepts and principles that distinguish its nature and drive its functioning.
Michael McDowell SC
Mr. Michael McDowell was appointed Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Coalition Government formed in June 2002. He served as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform until June 2007, and as Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) from September 2006 to June 2007. He chaired the Working Group in Company Law Enforcement and Compliance which reported in 1998 and the Financial Services Advisory Group which reported in 1999. In July 1999 he was appointed Attorney General of Ireland and served in that post until June 2002, when on the formation of the new Government he was appointed Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
He was educated at Gonzaga College, Dublin, from 1959 – 1968. He graduated in Economics and Politics from the National University of Ireland at University College Dublin, qualified as a barrister in 1974 and was called to the Inner Bar in 1987. He practises as a Senior Counsel in the Law Library, Dublin. He was elected as an independent member to Seanad Éireann, the Irish Senate, by the graduates of the National University of Ireland in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, where he is a member of the Committee on Procedural Privileges and is chair of the Members’ Interests Committee.
Michael Conlon SC
Michael was called to the Bar in 1993 and took silk in 2011. As a junior counsel, he did mostly civil litigation and focussed on private law with some work in the personal injuries list; the common law list; the examiners list; the chancery list; jury list; the non-jury list and the commercial list. He also worked in the EAT and did property compensation cases in front of the state arbitrator and some planning oral hearings. Michael only did one case immigration case as a junior (a handover from Michael Lynn against Siobhán Stack).
Since Michael took silk, he has (in addition to other areas) appeared in a vast number of immigration and asylum cases. Many of these case have considered complex and novel questions of law; Michael’s contributions have undoubtedly been instrumental in adding (and he continues to add) to the wealth of jurisprudence in this area. Some of those cases Michael has appeared in include:
• S.J.L. v Refugee Appeals Tribunal [2016] IECA 47, [2016] 2 IR 559 (whether a person who breached China’s one child policy was a member of a social group).
• N.M (DRC) v Minister for Justice [2016] IECA 217, [2018] 2 IR 591 (whether judicial review was an effective remedy)
• M v Minister for Justice and Equality [2018] IESC 14, [2018] 1 IR 417 (position of the unborn at deportation stage).
• D.E v Minister for Justice and Equality [2018] IESC 16, [2018] 3 IR 326 (position of seriously ill person at deportation stage).
• M.R (Albania) v The Minister for Justice and Equality [2020] IEHC 402 (the requirement to set up a panel under section 23 of the International Protection Act, 2015).
• Joined Cases C 322/19 KS and MHK v IPAT and C 385/19, RAT and DS v Minister for Justice (about the right of access to the labour market for persons in respect of whom a transfer decision has been taken under Dublin III).
Emily Farrell SC
Emily Farrell SC is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and the University of Aberdeen. Her practice at the Bar is mixed with an emphasis on Judicial Review and Extradition. She has practised in the area of Immigration and Asylum Law since 2001 and has taught on the Immigration and Asylum Module of the Degree course at the King’s Inns from 2006 – 2017 and the Advanced Diploma in Immigration and Asylum Law since 2015. She has represented the State at the Court of Justice of the European Union and regularly appears on behalf of respondents in relation to immigration and asylum matters before the Superior Courts.
Anthony Lowry BL
Anthony was called to the Bar in 2003. He practises in civil litigation and public law. Since his early stages at the bar, Anthony has specialised in immigration and asylum law with a particular emphasis on cases that engage Constitutional and European Union law. Some of the cases Anthony acted as Junior Counsel include:
• Metock and Others C 127/08, EU:C:2008:449 (The scope of the right to family reunification of Union citizens and their third country national family members within the meaning of Article 2.2 of Council Directive 2004/38/EC).
• Dokie v. DPP [2010] IEHC 110, [2011] 1 IR 805 (Whether the obligation imposed on non-nationals to produce evidence of identity on demand violated the Constitutional prohibition of vagueness in criminal statutes).
• Kadri v. Governor of Wheatfield Prison [2012] IESC 27, [2012] 2 I.L.R.M. 392 (Whether an extension of the 8 week limit on the period of detention for the purpose of deportation could be implied in the event of extenuating circumstances).
• N.V.H -v- Minister for Justice & Equality and ors [2017] IESC 35, [2018] 1 IR 246, [2017] 1 ILRM 105 (Whether the absolute prohibition on employment of asylum seekers contained violated the constitutional right to seek employment).
• V.K. v. The Minister for Justice [2019] IECA 232 (The criteria to be applied when assessing dependency within the meaning of Council Directive 2004/38/EC)
• K.N. and M.A.M. v Minister for Justice [2020] IESC 32 (whether a naturalised refugee continued to enjoy the status of refugee for the purpose of family reunification pursuant to the Refugee Act 1996).