Three judges nominated for appointment to Supreme Court and Court of Appeal

The Government has approved the nomination of three judges for appointment to the superior courts, one to the Supreme Court and two to the Court of Appeal.

Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly, currently a judge of the Court of Appeal, has been nominated for appointment by the President to the Supreme Court. She will be the first openly gay member of that court.

Two High Court judges, Mr Justice Charles Meenan and Ms Justice Tara Burns, have been nominated for appointment by the President to the Court of Appeal.

The nominations follow the Government’s acceptance of recommendations of the Judicial Planning Working Group to increase judicial numbers.

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The nomination of barrister Ann-Marie Courell as county registrar for counties Mayo and Roscommon was also approved on Tuesday.

Educated at University College Dublin and the King’s Inns, Ms Justice Donnelly was called to the Bar in 1988 and became a senior counsel in 2004. She was a former co-chair of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

She was appointed a High Court judge in 2014. As the judge in charge of the extradition list, her decision to defer an order for the extradition of a man to Poland in 2018, arising from a constitutional crisis there in 2015 involving executive and legislative threats to judicial independence, provoked some media criticism in Poland.

However, associations representing judges in Ireland and Europe issued statements of support for her. After referring the matter to the Court of Justice of the EU, Ms Justice Donnelly held there was no specific threat to the man’s fair trial rights.

She was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2019.

Educated at UCD and the King’s Inns, Mr Justice Meenan was called to the Bar in 1980 and became a senior counsel in 1998. His wide practice as a barrister included representing many defendants in medical negligence cases. He represented former Taoiseach John Bruton at the Moriarty tribunal in 1999.

Appointed to the High Court in 2017, among his most significant judgments was one in favour of student Elijah Burke’s challenge to his exclusion, as a homeschooled student, from the Leaving Cert calculated grades scheme introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having been asked to report on alternatives to court cases arising tom the Cervical Check controversy, the judge proposed the establishment of a tribunal of inquiry.

Canadian-born Ms Justice Tara Burns, who grew up in Sligo and was educated at UCD, was called to the Bar in 1995 and became a senior counsel in 2013. She appeared in many criminal cases for the DPP and individual defendants and represented the Garda Commissioner at the Morris tribunal investigating allegations against gardaí in Co Donegal.

Appointed a judge of the High Court in June 2018, she was assigned to the Special Criminal Court later that year. She was the presiding judge at the Regency hotel murder trial which resulted in the recent acquittal of Gerard Hutch on a charge of murdering Kinahan gang member David Byrne. Two co-accused were convicted of lesser charges.