A round-up of news and diary dates for the legal profession.
Freedom of Information in healthcare
Mason Hayes+Curran Solicitors will hold a lecture on "Freedom of Information in Healthcare" at its offices on Barrow Street, Dublin, at 6pm on Wednesday next.
This lecture will provide an introduction to Freedom of Information (FOI), including dealing with FOI requests and the relationship between data protection and FOI.
The lecture will have a particular focus on the healthcare sector.
The FOI came into effect on April 21st , 1998, and was amended on April 11th, 2003. During this time access to information through the Freedom of Information Acts has assisted in a number of investigations including mistreatment of patients in nursing homes and misdiagnosis of patients.
The lecture will be given by Catherine Allen, a senior associate with Mason Hayes+Curran, who practises in the administrative and public law team of the litigation department.
She was also heavily involved in the preparation of the Freedom of Information
Belfast Solicitors celebrate
The Belfast Solicitors Association have published an illustrated anniversary book to celebrate 65 years of the profession in the city.
Edited by Don Anderson, Serving the City is published by Blackstaff Press and contains forewords from First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Tom Hartley, President Mary McAleese and Henry Elvin of the Ulster Bank.
There are 25 essays made up of various reminiscences and items on the history of the profession in the city over the years.
New partner in Beauchamps
Shaun O'Shea has been appointed to the position of managing partner with Beauchamps, succeeding Imelda Reynolds who held the position for six years and has now taken up the position of partner in the Commercial Property department.
Mr O'Shea joined the firm in 1993 and was appointed a partner in 1999.
Prior to taking up his present position as managing partner, he was head of the firm's corporate and commercial department.
O'Higgins elected DSBA president
Kevin OHiggins was elected President of the Dublin Bar Association (DSBA) last Tuesday at its AGM in the Westbury Hotel. The DSBA is an association of solicitors all practising in the greater Dublin region, and has about 4,000 members. It is therefore one of the largest voluntary legal associations in Ireland and the UK.
The voluntary bar associations differ from the Law Society in that they have no regulatory function, existing purely and simply to represent their members, advocate best practice, and endeavour to provide practical guidance to members on issues or problems that they may wish us to address.
"We are also frequently the interface between a member who might be encountering a particular road block such as a professional fall-out with a judge or whatever," Mr OHiggins told The Irish Times.
"We are a very active association and endeavour to break down the them and us attitudes which have occasionally existed between the Law Society and the membership, the Bar and ourselves on the solicitor side, or the barrister-judicially dominated bench and the practising solicitor advocates," he said.