NUI MAYNOOTH held its first graduation ceremony for law students yesterday. Founded in 2008, NUI Maynooth Law is the youngest law school in Ireland.
Its inaugural graduating class consisted of 28 students, each of whom yesterday received either a Bachelor of Civil Law or Bachelor of Business Law degree.
Addressing the ceremony, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton told the graduates, as the first graduation class: “You will always be very special.”
Ms Burton impressed upon her audience, which included many family members, the need to reshape legal practices in Ireland. She added that too often not enough consideration was paid to the difference between what was legal and what was morally right.
“Recent illustrations of the perils of ignoring this message are contained in the Anglo saga and indeed in the Cloyne report,” she said.
While she stressed that the legal profession “needs a lot of reform”, she also highlighted the good work done by lawyers nationwide.
“I think it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge huge contributions, by solicitors, barristers and academic law, to pro bono work.”
Professor of law at NUI Maynooth, Sandeep Gopalan, encouraged his now former students to be part of the solution to Ireland’s economic crisis.
“You have the opportunity to work to shape laws and create institutions that will ensure that collapses of this size and this scale are, if not impossible, at least become very difficult in the future.”
Earlier in the day, 21 members of the Defence Forces graduated from the university with an MA in Leadership, Management and Defence Studies in a ceremony attended by their chief-of-staff, Lt Gen Sean McCann.
The nine-month residential course aims to develop the professional knowledge and understanding of its students, in order to prepare them to fulfil command and staff appointments both in Ireland and overseas on international assignments.
Among this years graduates were international army personnel from the US, Malta and Germany. It brings the number of senior officers to have graduated from the course since it began in 2001 to more than 200.