Annual Lecture 2023: The Courts and Court Officers Act 2002: Reflections on 20 Years of Solicitors as Superior Court Judges

• Date: 01 January 2023

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ANNUAL LECTURE 2023

THE COURTS AND COURT OFFICERS

ACT 2002: REFLECTIONS ON 20YEARS

OFSOLICITORS AS SUPERIOR

COURTJUDGES

Remarks by

THE HON. MR. JUSTICE MICHAEL UINN*1

ank you, Joshua. And thank you for inviting me to chair this evening’s event.

e the panel we have here this evening, really and truly needs no introduction,

but I will for the record, and since you’re recording it, make make something of an

introduction.

We’re especially pleased to have with us this evening, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill,

Minister at the Department of Finance, with a hugely heavy workload of nancial

services, credit unions, insurance, and so on – so I suspect that’s the heavy liing

part of the Department of Finance. Jennifer is both a barrister and a solicitor,

having qualied as both, and before entering politics, had a series of appointments

as a special adviser in a number of ministries, which are particularly relevant to

everyone here, everything from housing, planning and local government, justice

and equality, and to the Minister for Children and Youth Aairs. And there’s a

common theme throughout those roles where there were agendas of reforms and

amendments to make the whole regime and our laws and in all of those areas more

protective of vulnerable people, both old and young people. So a huge amount of

work and achievements in those functions.

Jennifer turned to politics and became a TD in 2020, having previously been a

counsellor in Dun Laoghaire, and served on again, important and hardworking

committees such as the Public Accounts Committee, the Implementation of the

Good Friday Agreement Committee, and the Gender Equality Committee.

Of particular interest in the context of our business here this evening, and we’ll

come back to the to the subject in little more detail, is that she’s the author of the

* e Hon. Mr. Justice Michael uinn is a Judge of the High Court, appointed in 2018. He is a

former solicitor, having qualied in 1985 aer studying at UCD, where he was Auditor of the UCD

Law Society. He has been Judge-in-Residence at the Hibernian Law Journal since 2021.