Chief Justice chairs opening plenary at Public Law Conference 2025

The Hon. Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell, Chief Justice chairing the opening plenary

In late May 2025, we were pleased to welcome a distinguished line up of speakers  to the Annual Conference of the UCD Centre for Constitutional Studies. This year’s conference was our most successful to date with an extremely engaged audience of legal professionals in attendance. Participants included the Chief Justice, two judges of the Court of Appeal, many senior barristers, representatives of leading law firms and speakers from both the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisors. We also welcomed many leading academic experts on public law from UCD and other Irish and UK universities.

The Hon. Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell, Chief Justice chaired the plenary session where “Constitutional stability and the rule of law” was the topic discussed.  University College London’s Professor Colm O’Cinneide delivered a thought-provoking paper titled ‘An island of stability?: Irish constitutional law and the democratic rule of law crisis’. He was followed by an excellent presentation from Dr Joelle Grogan, the legal academic, broadcaster, and expert on the rule of law who works across the fields of UK, and EU law. She titled her discussion: “In stormy seas: democratic deconsolidation and rule of law breakdown beyond Ireland”.

Professor Colm O’Cinneide and Joelle Grogan speaking at the first plenary session

For plenary two: “General issues in public law”, we were honoured to welcome Mr Justice Brian O’Moore of the Court of Appeal, to chair a panel with speakers Joe Jeffers SC, Professor Catherine Donnelly SC of TCD and Professor Eoin Carolan SC of UCD.

The Hon. Mr Justice Brian O’Moore of the Court of Appeal chairing plenary two

Chief Justice Mr Donal O’Donnell with Dr Saoirse Enright, Benedetta Lobina and Professor Eoin Carolan

There were four further sessions across the day with parallel sessions running across the main areas of public law featuring leading practitioners and academics discussing the following topics:

• Parliamentary Privilege in practice
• Equality before the law
• Legal costs and access to justice
• Regulation and investigations
• Information and data protection
• Commercial and arbitration
• Immigration and citizenship
• Planning and environmental

The full conference programme, outlining all speakers and topics, can be downloaded at this link.