The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, is to retire on 18 June, with his last day of service on 17 June.

Appointed to the High Court in 1996, in 2004 he became the presiding judge over a newly established Commercial Court, to hear cases which were complex or involved a claim in excess of €1 million.

'Fearlessly independent'

As a result, he heard a number of high-profile cases following the economic crash, including those involving Anglo Irish Bank, Seán Quinn, Mick Wallace and ACC Bank.

At the time of Judge Kelly’s appointment as President of the High Court in 2015, Law Society Director General Ken Murphy described him as a fearlessly independent judge with a first-class legal mind.

Association

On 29 November, 2011, Judge Kelly was elected as the first president of the Association of Judges of Ireland.

Mr Justice Kelly was educated at O’Connell’s Schools, UCD and King’s Inns. He was called to the Bar in 1973 and spent two years working in the European Division of the Department of Justice.

Commercial law

He began practice at the Bar in 1975 and was called to the Inner Bar in 1986, practising mainly in the area of chancery and commercial law.

Judge Kelly is a member of the Bars of England and Northern Ireland and an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights. He is chairman of the Commercial Law Centre at UCD and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Maynooth University.

He is a former president of the Medico Legal Society of Ireland and is a member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.