Dr Geoffrey Shannon SC is to be appointed a judge of the Circuit Court.

The Government also agreed yesterday (7 March) to nominate Rory Mulcahy SC as an ordinary judge of the High Court. The High Court vacancy arose following the retirement of Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy last week.

Barristers Sinead Behan and Dermot Sheehan are also appointed to the Circuit Court.

The three vacancies of ordinary Judges of the Circuit Court arose following the commencement of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act, 2022. This act provides for the statutory complement of the ordinary judges of the Circuit Court to be increased by three – from 37 to 40. 

Senior counsel

Solicitor Geoffrey Shannon SC was educated at NUI, Galway and University College Dublin and qualified as a solicitor in 1996. He chaired the Adoption Authority of Ireland from 2007-20, and was named a senior counsel in 2020.

Dr Shannon was also Special Rapporteur on Child Protection for the Irish Government from 2006-19. His independent report into historical child sex-abuse allegations in St John Ambulance has recently been completed and is due to be launched next week.

The review was commissioned by St John Ambulance after a newspaper investigation reported that several men had allegedly been sexually abused in the 1990s by a senior figure in the organisation’s Old Kilmainham division in Dublin.