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Uachtarán na hÉireann, Catherine Connolly, has today appointed seven people to serve as members of the Council of State in accordance with Article 31 of the Constitution.

The appointees are as follows:

• Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
• Linda Ervine
• Colin Harvey
• Kathleen Lynch
• Donncha O’Connell
• Conor O’Mahony
• Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh

In a statement, President Connolly said:

“May I thank each of the nominees who have agreed to serve as a member of the Council of State. These seven members bring a unique expertise and range of experience to the Council of State which will be of immense value in considering the matters which may arise over the course of my term of office. I look forward to receiving their advice and support over the next seven years.”

In addition to the President’s seven nominees, the Council of State also consists of the following members:

• Ex-officio members: the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Chief Justice, the President of the Court of Appeal, the President of the High Court, the Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann, the Cathaoirleach of Seanad Éireann, and the Attorney General.
• Every person able and willing to act as a member of the Council of State who has previously held the office of President, Taoiseach or Chief Justice.

Notes to Editors:

Biographies of Appointees

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin was born in Dublin and grew up in the Connemara Gaeltacht, and Gaeilge is her mother tongue. She is a globally recognized international law and human rights expert. She is currently Professor of Law at the Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland and concurrently Regents Professor and Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Irish Academy and Fellow of the British Academy. She has held visiting positions at Harvard Law School, Yale University, Princeton University, the Geneva Academy (Switzerland), Juan Carlos III University (Spain) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Ní Aoláin is the recipient of numerous academic awards and honours including the Leverhulme Fellowship, British Academy Awards, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, Fulbright scholarship and the Lawlor fellowship.

Her academic work has been in the fields of emergency powers, counter-terrorism and human rights, conflict regulation, transitional justice and sex-based violence in times of war. She has served on the Board of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a Belfast-based human rights organisation since 1989, and it currently its Vice-Chair. Professor Ní Aoláin was United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism (2017- 2023). She was appointed K.C (Hons) in 2004. She was appointed as Commissioner to the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic in 2025.

Linda Ervine

Linda Ervine was born into a working-class Protestant family in east Belfast. She is the manager of the first Irish language centre to be based in a loyalist area. When she began learning Irish in 2011, no one would have conceived of the idea of an Irish language centre in the heart of east Belfast but despite the many difficulties, Turas is now one of the largest providers of Irish language classes in Belfast. She is the founder of Scoil na Seolta, the first Integrated school to teach through the medium of Irish.

In 2021 she was honoured to receive the MBE for her work promoting the Irish language. In 2023 she was given an honorary doctorate by Queen’s University and in 2025 she was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy as well as an honorary degree from Trinity College in June that year. He latest award was an honorary degree from the Open University in October 2025.

Colin Harvey

Colin Harvey is a Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, a Commissioner on the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and a member of the Scientific Committee of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency.

Professor Harvey is a former Head of the Law School at Queen's and served two terms as a Commissioner on the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. He has an extensive and distinguished record of leadership, scholarship, public service and civic engagement in the fields of constitutional and human rights law over a 30-year career in higher education.

Kathleen Lynch

Kathleen Lynch is a sociologist and Professor of Equality Studies (Emerita) at University College Dublin (UCD) where she has also held a Senior Lectureship in Education. She served as a member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) from 2020-2025. She is currently an elected Executive Member of the Global Forum for Rehumanizing Education.

Kathleen has devoted her life to advancing equality and social justice through research, education and activism. Her teaching and research are guided by the belief that the purpose of scholarship and research is not just to understand the world but to change it for the good of all humanity. To that end, she played a leading role in establishing the UCD Equality Studies Centre (1990) and the UCD School of Social Justice (2004/5). Her work involved developing and establishing and teaching graduate, undergraduate and Outreach programmes in Equality Studies and Social Justice over a 30-year period.

She has authored over 300 academic articles, and a number of books on all types of equality and social justice issues, with a strong focus on education. Most recently she has published extensively on the relationship between care, equality and social justice: Affective Equality: Love, Care and Injustice (2009 lead author); and Care and Capitalism: Why Affective Equality Matters for Social Justice (Polity Press, Cambridge 2022).

An invited scholar in several leading universities throughout the world, Kathleen was awarded the University College Dublin (UCD) Medal for Pioneering Change, in 2018, and the Irish Research Council, President of Ireland Prize for research Promoting Equality and Social Justice, in 2019.

Donncha O’Connell

Donncha O’Connell is an Established Professor of Law at University of Galway. He served two terms as a Commissioner of the Law Reform Commission and was also a member of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland and a board member of the Legal Aid Board. More recently, he was a member of the Independent Review Group to consider the Offences Against the State Acts.

He has served on the boards of a number of human rights organisations including, INTERIGHTS, FLAC and Amnesty International – Ireland, and was the first full-time Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL). He was the Irish member of the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights and, later, the Senior Irish member of FRALEX, the legal expert group that advised the EU Fundamental Rights Agency based in Vienna. He also served for over nine years on the board of the internationally-acclaimed Druid Theatre Company.

Conor O’Mahony

Conor O'Mahony is Professor of Law and Dean of the School of Law at University College Cork. His teaching and research focuses on constitutional law and children's rights.

He has provided expert input on these topics to various Oireachtas Committees, the Constitutional Convention, the Citizen's Assembly, and the Council of Europe Venice Commission.

He is director of the Child Law Clinic, which has supported successful litigation in the Irish Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. From 2019-2022, he served as Special Rapporteur on Child Protection to the Government of Ireland.

Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh

Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh is former President of Ollscoil na Gaillimhe – University of Galway where his vision was for a university with values, a university for the public good. He was also Chairperson of Universities Ireland, encouraging co-operation between the universities on the island of Ireland. Prior to that, he was Professor of Accounting and Dean of the business schools at UCD.

He has a PhD from the University of Leeds and was a Fulbright Scholar at Northeastern University in Boston.

He is on the board of the National Library of Ireland, on the Council of the Economic and Social Research Institute and on the editorial board of Studies. Scríobhann sé alt as Gaeilge ó am go chéile don Irish Times.