Catherine McGuinness Fellowship
In 2015, the Children’s Rights Alliance established a prestigious one-year Fellowship Programme for newly qualified barristers to work as part of our Legal and Policy Team on law and policy reform for children in the area of children’s rights and child law.
The Fellowship is entitled the Catherine McGuinness Fellowship in honour of one of Ireland’s greatest children’s champions. This programme has been developed in partnership with The Bar of Ireland and with the support of the Family Lawyers’ Association of Ireland. The Fellowship has been hugely successful, providing us with the dedicated in-house expertise of a barrister as well as providing the Fellow with a unique developmental opportunity, enhancing their reputation and future employability.
Fellows can become champions for children’s rights and become better able to advocate to protect, promote and fulfil children’s rights in their work.
Seán Beatty is the Children’s Rights Alliance/Bar of Ireland Catherine McGuinness Fellow for 2024.
He is a practising barrister based in Dublin and lectures in Human Rights Law on the undergraduate and postgraduate law programmes at Griffith College. Prior to starting at the Bar, Seán worked as a Judicial Assistant at the Supreme Court for three years. He has had a variety of legal roles in Ireland, the United States and Asia, and holds an LL.B from the University of Limerick and an LL.M in Human Rights Law from the University of Nottingham.