A round up of today's other legal stories in brief...
7,500 law scholarship at NUI Galway
A new scholarship worth €7,500 a year has been launched at NUI Galway for a place on its new LLM in Law, Technology and Governance.
The scholarship is sponsored by the firm of RDJ Glynn in Galway, and will be awarded on academic merit, in a competition open to all candidates offered a place on the first intake of the new Master's degree. It is tenable for one year of full-time study and will be paid monthly over the academic session.
Further information on the course and the scholarship is available from the Law School, NUI Galway.
New chairman for Bar Council
Michael M Collins SC has been elected as chairman of the Bar Council.
A graduate of University College Dublin, holding Master's degrees in economics and law, he also holds an LLM from the University of Pennsylvania.
A member of the New York Bar, he worked with Shearman & Sterling in New York in 1980-81 before returning to Ireland to practise at the Irish Bar.
He was admitted to the Bar of England and Wales in 1987, took silk in Ireland in 1994 and was called to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court in 2003.
He practises in the area of civil law with an emphasis on commercial law, constitutional law and judicial review. In 1996, he was appointed by the Government as chairman of the Competition and Mergers Review Group.
He is a member of the Development Council to the Law Faculty at UCD, vice-chairman of Exploration Station (a proposed interactive science museum for children), a director of the Dublin Theatre Festival and a member of the board of All Hallows College.
Among his recent cases, he acted for Bupa in the risk equalisation litigation and for Katherine Zappone and Louise Gilligan in their case asserting a constitutional right to marry for gay people.
Guide to FOI Acts launched
A new guide to the Freedom of Information Acts was launched last week by the Information Commissioner, Emily O'Reilly.
The 290-page publication, published by Mason Hayes & Curran and Public Affairs Ireland, comprises a consolidated and annotated version of the 1997-2003 FOI Acts. It shows the changes made to the 1997 Act by the 2003 Act and other pieces of legislation, as well as highlighting relevant decisions of the Information Commissioner and court judgments that have impacted on various sections of the legislation.
Immigration Bill seminar
A seminar on the Immigration Bill, organised by the Bar Council, will take place this Wednesday, July 23rd, in the Morrison Hotel, Ormond Quay, Dublin, from 4.30pm to 6pm.
Among the topics discussed will be powers of removal, residence permissions, changes to judicial review procedures, the proposed new procedures for asylum seekers, and details of the 2008 Bill.
The speakers will be Siobhan Stack BL, Colm O'Dwyer BL and Manuel Jordao of the UNHCR, and the seminar will be chaired by Mr Justice George Birmingham.