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• The State Duty Not to Approve New Fossil Fuels

  A growing number of cases worldwide are challenging State approval of new fossil fuel projects: from Ireland to Guyana, Greece to South Africa. UN Secretary General, António Guterres, describes such projects as “moral and economic madness”. But since 2021, over 2,300 new extraction projects and 119 new LNG Terminals have been approved for development worldwide....

• Teaching ≈ Learning ≈ Regulation

  At the behest of Dr Paulina Wilson of QUB I recently wrote a short piece for the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly series called Reflections on Teaching. Around 5,000 words. Usually it takes me 5K to draw breath, so it was quite a challenge to reflect on 44 years in education, 34 of them in legal...

• Gender Pay Gap Reporting in Northern Ireland

  Northern Ireland is moving towards a statutory gender pay gap reporting framework. The Department for Communities (DfC) is currently in the process of implementing legislative changes to introduce gender pay gap reporting requirements for employers in Northern Ireland.

• Public Interest Immunity: who has primary responsibility?

  In the matter of an application by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for Judicial Review (Appellant) [2025] UKSC 47 here At approximately 11.15pm on 27 April 1994, 25-year-old Liam Paul Thompson was shot and killed near a gap in a peace line separating nationalist and unionist neighbourhoods in Belfast. No one has ever...

• Digital Searches in Ireland: Garda Powers Bill published

  The Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has published a draft Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill, with huge implications for digital searches in Ireland. This follows on from a Heads of Bill originally put forward in 2021. There were clear problems with that proposal, which I discussed in the Irish Times at the time. Many of these were...

• A Festschrift for W.N. Osborough

  New from Four Courts Press: A Sense of Place: Studies in British and Irish legal history in memory of W.N. Osborough, edited by Sparky Booker and Kevin Costello: W.N. Osborough was described by the Irish Times on his death in 2020 as Ireland’s ‘greatest legal historian’. He wrote prolifically on Irish legal history and culture...

• Ireland’s EU relationship – a reply to Eoin Drea on Niamh Sweeney and the DPC

  I have a letter to the Editor in yesterday’s Irish Times (with a few added links): Sir, – Eoin Drea‘s article on Ireland’s EU presidency provides many examples of “an Ireland that is totally directionless on EU affairs”. At least two are baseless. First, he argues that Brussels sees Ireland as doubling down on its...

• Art Detectives, Vermeer forgeries, and the slaveship Zong

  A new addition to tv’s cozy crime genre is Art Detectives (Back Dog Television, for Acorn TV; shown in Ireland and the UK on U&Drama; also available on PrimeVideo). It stars Stephen Moyer (imdb | wikipedia) as DI Mick Palmer of the Heritage Crime Unit, and Nina Singh (imdb) as DC Shazia Malik of the...

• DPC statement on LinkedIn AI training

  Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has released a statement revealing that LinkedIn informed the DPC of its plan to train proprietary generative AI models using personal data from EU/EEA members, set to commence in early November 2025. After reviewing LinkedIn’s data protection documentation and engaging extensively, the DPC identified several risks and issues, leading to...

• Campylobacter and E. coli infections rise in Ireland

  Campylobacter cases continued to rise in Ireland, but Listeria and Salmonella rates were stable, according to recently released data. Figures come from a report published by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) that includes foodborne illnesses in the second quarter of this year.  There were higher rates in April to June for campylobacteriosis, hepatitis A...

Featured documents

• Ireland: More needs to be spent on elder care

  From Ireland On Line: The State needs to spend an extra €500m each year on community care for older people, it was claimed today. The National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) said Irish spending on the elderly is the lowest in Europe, at almost €6,500 per person compared to €19,500...

• Irish Government Challenges Adequacy Level of Data Protection in Israel

  On July 6, 2010, Ireland raised objections regarding the adequacy of Israeli data protection law, thus requiring the European Commission to undertake a full review before making a final decision on the legitimacy of data transfers to Israel....

• Ireland Proposes Amendments to Copyright Law

  Written by Ezra Steinhardt and Colin Warriner On 29 October 2013, the Republic of Ireland’s Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation (DJEI) published a report containing proposed amendments to its copyright laws, named “Modernising Copyright” (“the Report”).  Taking account of submissions...

• Article on the Institution of the Trust in Ireland

  Oonagh B. Breen (University of California, Davis) recently published an article entitled, National Perspectives: The Institution of the Trust in Ireland, UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology & Socio-Legal Studies Research Paper No. 03/2015.  Provided below is the abstract from SSRN: This...

• Independence of ODPC called into question

  Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) intend to serve legal proceedings on the Government in the coming days, claiming that the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has acted in breach of EU law by failing to ensure that the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) exercises her role independently. Th...

• Carolan on Public Interest Reporting: The Future of Journalistic Privilege @UCDLawSchool

  Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin School of Law, is publishing Protecting Public Interest Reporting: What Is the Future of Journalistic Privilege? in the Irish Jurist. Here is the abstract. Questions have recently been raised by the Disclosure Tribunal about the scope and basis of...

• Supreme Court of Ireland to Review Facebook Privacy Case

  On July 31, 2018, the Supreme Court of Ireland granted Facebook, Inc.’s leave to appeal a lower court’s ruling sending a privacy case to the Court of Justice of the European Union. In granting Facebook leave to appeal, the Supreme Court noted that “[i]t is in the interest of justice” that the Court ...

• Ireland Moves Forward with New Parental Leave Policies

  The President of Ireland is on track to sign into law a new amendment to parental leave laws after the country’s upper house (“Seanad Éireann”) approved it on May 8, 2019. The law had previously passed the lower house (“Dáil Éireann”) on June 13, 2018. The amendment now returns to Dáil Éireann for...

• Researchers warn about risk of eating wild mushrooms

  There is growing interest in collecting wild fungi in Ireland but this is not supported by an appreciation of the associated dangers, according to researchers. The issue constitutes a growing national health threat, wrote Dr. Douglas Hamilton and Dr. Gerard Meagher, from the department of public...

• FSAI reviews 2019 work on food safety and fraud

  The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has reviewed the main activities of this past year which marked the agency’s 20th anniversary. The annual report covers enforcement, inspections, sampling, recalls, Brexit, and food fraud. FSAI also launched the authority’s 2019 to 2023 strategy and held...