Northern Ireland

The Bar of Northern Ireland has announced Action Deaf Youth as its chosen charity for 2021/22. The charity works across Northern Ireland providing direct services to deaf children from 0-25 years and their families. They support their users to grow in self-confidence, develop positive relationships

Children's rights in Northern Ireland are being compromised by a failure to implement recommendations made by a youth justice review more than a decade ago, according to a new report. The Children's Law Centre, Include Youth, NIACRO and Voice of Young People in Care (VOYPIC) commissioned youth justi

Family lawyer Karen Connolly has been appointed to a steering group set up by Women's Aid to raise awareness about the impact of domestic abuse on women aged 55 and over. Ms Connolly, a partner at Belfast-based Francis Hanna & Co Solicitors, will help guide and support the Older But No Safer pro

A tribunal has found against the Department of Finance for twice refusing to backdate an appellant’s Disabled Person's Allowance. The tribunal found that the Department's repeated and categorical refusal was an unfair misstatement of the law. The Northern Ireland Valuation Tribunal (NIVT) reli

Legacy gifts to the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland can be matched at 50 per cent under the first initiative of its kind in Northern Ireland.

Global law firm Allen & Overy (A&O) has announced plans to build on the success of its legal services centre in Belfast with the opening of a second advanced delivery centre in Perth, Australia. The new centre, similar to that opened in Belfast in 2011, will comprise legal support profession

The Northern Ireland Executive has agreed to introduce legislation to extend the so-called "six-month rule" for terminally ill people accessing certain benefits. The High Court ruled last summer that the requirement for terminally ill claimants to demonstrate that their death can reasonably be expec

Queen's University Belfast (QUB) law student Vivien Loughrey has been presented with the JMK Solicitors Prize, worth £3,000. Ms Loughrey received the prize after achieving the highest mark in her tort law module, as well as meeting the widening access criteria set by the university.

Delayed work to establish a dedicated mental health court in Northern Ireland will not resume until at least next year and possibly later, it has emerged. Scoping work on the pilot mental health court was "paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic", justice minister Naomi Long said earlier this month.

Research commissioned by Northern Ireland's Youth Justice Agency (YJA) will establish "if and why" children and young people from a Catholic background are more likely to be detained in custody. Around three-quarters of young offenders held in Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre are from a Catholic ba

A statutory public inquiry into mother and baby institutions and Magdalane laundries in Northern Ireland will take place as part of an "integrated truth investigation", the Northern Ireland Executive has announced. Ministers have agreed all recommendations in the report produced by the truth recover

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has come under pressure from US legislators to speak out against the UK government's controversial plans to end all criminal investigations and prosecutions linked to killings during the Troubles. A bipartisan group of 21 members of the US Congress, led by

Belief marriages overseen by humanist celebrants would have equal legal status with religious marriage under plans put out to consultation in Northern Ireland. The Department of Finance is seeking feedback on a number of changes to marriage laws, including an increase in the minimum age for marriage

Northern Ireland's Crown Court has ruled that a "self-centred" murderer with 51 prior convictions will not be eligible for parole for at least 21 years. The court examined the violence of the murder, and the state of the defendant, determining that both were aggravating factors, which warranted exte

There have been no convictions under Northern Ireland's "ground-breaking" mental capacity laws nearly two years after they were brought into effect. The Mental Capacity Act (NI) 2016 fuses together mental capacity and mental health law for those aged 16 and over within a single piece of legislation,