Qualifications

Degree of Barrister-at-Law (first class honours in company law, equity, advocacy)

Legal Studies Diploma of King's Inns (honours - first place in criminal law)

City and Guilds Data Processing Certificates: fundamentals (merit); methods and applications (merit)

Employment

1978 Radio Telefis Eireann, Dublin, senior reporter, TV and radio sub-editor

1987 Radio Telefis Eireann, Dublin, religious affairs correspondent

1990 Radio Telefis Eireann, Dublin, legal affairs correspondent

1995-2000 Practising barrister, Dublin

2000- Senior assistant editor, The Sunday Business Post, Dublin 

Experience

I'm a journalist, barrister, author, computer user - and father.

I am currently the senior assistant editor of Ireland's leading business, financial and political newspaper, The Sunday Business Post. I am also a practising member of the European Circuit of the Bar of England and Wales.

After leaving school, I worked as a print journalist in England and Ireland for weekly and daily newspapers, national and provincial titles and specialist magazines and periodicals, as reporter, sub-editor and specialist correspondent.

As a broadcast journalist, I have worked in news and programmes on regional and national stations in Britain and Ireland. I presented networked programmes in the UK, and worked for the Irish national broadcasting network, Radio Telefis Eireann, as a radio and TV reporter, sub-editor and senior correspondent.

I have experience of the latest computerised video and radio programme-making and editing techniques, and have directed, edited and produced my own commercial DVD and audio productions.

As religious affairs correspondent for RTE, I was awarded the Silver Medal of the Order of Malta for my contribution to religious journalism. I still write for Catholic World News.

As legal affairs correspondent for RTE, I was the author of a report on televising the courts, and was the first journalist to broadcast pictures of sitting courts in Ireland. I was called to the Irish Bar in July 1995.

As an author, I won the Justice Media award of the Law Society of Ireland for my 1993 book The Kilkenny Incest Case (Poolbeg - ISBN: 1-85371-189-6), which stayed in the Irish best-sellers list for four months and resulted in a change in the Irish law on incest. I won a Law Society Justice Media certificate in 2002 for a series of articles on the in camera rule which led the government to change the law. I won my second Law Society Justice Media certificate in 2003 for an article on proposals for changes in family law. My third Justice Media certificate in 2004 was for a feature on Ireland's new commercial court. I won my second Justice Media award in 2007 for an article about the restrictions on personal freedoms contained in the proposed Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill.

I am also the author of The High Court, A User's Guide (Four Courts Press - second edition ISBN: 1-85182-588-6) and co-author of Divorce In Ireland (FirstLaw - second edition ISBN: 1-904480-047). My practitioners' book on contempt of court, co-written with solicitor Pamela Cassidy, will hopefully be published in early 2009. I also wrote The Latter Day Saints (Veritas - ISBN: 1-85390-295-0).

I am a qualified computer programmer, with knowledge of Cobol, Basic, HTML, Photoshop, Premiere, Soundforge and Director