Executive Team
| Dr Carol Coulter is the Executive Director of the Child Law Project. She established the Child Law Project in 2012 and led it, as its Director, over a nine-year period. She is the former Legal Affairs Editor of the Irish Times and ran a Pilot Project on Family Law Reporting for the Courts Service in 2006/2007.
Email: carol@childlawproject.ie |
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| Dr Maria Corbett is the Chief Executive Officer of the Child Law Project. She was appointed to this role in February 2022. She joined the Child Law Project in 2016 as a Reporter and in 2020 was appointed its Deputy Director. Previously, she was Deputy Chief Executive and Legal and Policy Director with the Children’s Rights Alliance.
Email: maria@childlawproject.ie |
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Reporters
| Isabelle Aylmer is a practicing barrister in Dublin and on the Eastern Circuit. Isabelle completed her undergraduate law degree at Trinity College Dublin, before completing a Master of Laws LL.M at University College London. Prior to commencing practice at the Bar, Isabelle was a judicial assistant to a judge of the High Court and the Supreme Court. Isabelle joined the CCLRP reporting team in 2019 and has reported on wardship proceedings, cases in the High Court secure care list, and proceedings in the District Court. |  |
| Ruth Davis is a practicing barrister at the Law Library since 2018 involved in civil litigation in a wide variety of areas including personal injury, medical negligence and data protection. She has a BSc and PhD in microbiology and prior to joining the Law Library, she worked for more than 20 years at senior management level in the Irish Higher Education sector spanning a wide range of strategic and operational portfolios. |  |
| Dympna Devenney trained as a paediatric nurse in Great Ormond Street in London. She has extensive experience in all areas of paediatric nursing. She has BSc in community child health and a MSc from TCD. She continues to practice paediatric nursing and is an occasional lecturer at UCD. She holds an LLB and was called to the bar in 2017. Her practice as a barrister is in civil law and her areas of interest are family and childcare law. |  |
| Caroline Doyle is a practicing barrister based in Dublin. She completed an Undergraduate Degree in UCD in French and English (BA), and thereafter completed a Masters in Common Law (MCL) in UCD. Prior to commencing practice, she worked as a Litigation Executive for five years. Currently practicing in both civil and criminal law, with particular areas of interest in employment law, regulatory crime, and asylum & immigration. Child Law Project since 2020. |  |
| Priscilla McAlister is a qualified barrister practising mostly in Dublin and on the Eastern circuit. She currently works in general practice and has an interest in civil, family and child care. Her prior professional background was in banking and financial services working in mainly legal and compliance roles. In addition to being a qualified barrister she holds the LCI designation and is an accredited CEDR mediator. Priscila joined the reporting team in October 2022. |  |
| Carla Murphy is a practicing barrister and Accredited Mediator. She holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Studies and an Advanced Diploma in Corporate, White Collar & Regulatory Crime. She practices in several areas including asylum & immigration and human rights. She has an interest in childcare law, in particular non-national children taken into care and unaccompanied minors. She has also trained on how to question children and obtain their views. She has been reporting for the Child Law Project since 2019. |  |
| Mairead O’Flynn is a practicing barrister in civil and family law on the Dublin and South Western Circuits, having been called to the Bar in 2016. She specialises in the areas of Education, Child Law and Data Protection. She has a Master’s Degree in Education and a post-graduate diploma in data protection law. She is a former Primary School principal of Scoil Mhuire, Ballymore Eustace, Naas. She tutors on the Advanced Diploma in Education Law for King’s Inns. She has reported for the Child Law Project since 2019. |  |
| Anne Purcell has extensive experience in social work across mental health, intellectual disability and child protection in Ireland and the UK. In her former Tusla post she acted as advisor on the implementation of Children First: National Guidance for Child Protection and Welfare for numerous national and local organisations and was an accredited child safeguarding tutor and trainer. She worked as a legal volunteer on the Baltimore, USA Innocence project from July-October 2017. She currently works as a barrister in general practice, and has a particular interest in social justice and children’s rights. She has reported for the Child Law Project since 2017. |  |
