Professional, Public & Regulatory Law

OUR TEAM

Our professional, public and regulatory law team in DAC Beachcroft Dublin is led by partner Gary Rice who has over 30 years’ experience advising clients on matters of public and regulatory law. The team includes legal director Aidan Healy, consultant Aideen Ryan, senior associates Brian Ormond, Niall Sexton, solicitors, Micaela Fitzpatrick and Helene Gallagher.

WHAT WE DO

The team acts for a wide range of public sector bodies across the professional regulatory, financial, health and social care, sport, health product regulation, health and safety, housing, media and property sectors. We also advise clients and stakeholders operating in regulated environments on public and regulatory law matters.

Good regulation involves understanding the problem first and ensuring the regulatory response is proportionate to the level of risk, while maintaining the confidence of the public and stakeholders.

Our market-leading professional, public and regulatory law team is committed to supporting our public sector and regulated clients achieve this objective. We are experts in navigating change, providing strategic advice and creating the space for clients to achieve their objectives while minimising the risk of legal challenge.

Our approach is one of flexibility, designed to ensure that we deliver the right outcome at the right price while enabling us to tailor the right mix of legal, commercial and process skills to match our clients’ particular needs.

We offer pragmatic, expert advice to develop robust policies, procedures and decision-making processes with the aim of removing the risk of legal challenge. Where challenge is unavoidable, we have some of the strongest dispute resolution experts in the sector.

We work with our clients to help them:

• anticipate regulatory developments;
• plan for change;
• raise awareness with policy makers;
• complete regulatory cases and transactions; and
• crisis management to include repairing any damaged relationships between the regulator and the regulated party.

HOW WE CAN ASSIST

We can assist with the following issues:

• advising on all aspects of professional regulation
• advising in relation to statutory oral hearings and inquiries
• health and safety investigations
• representation at inquests
• advising in relation to integrity and probity proceedings
• advising on regulatory prosecutions
• drafting statutory rules, regulations, guidelines and codes of conduct
• advising in relation to High Court and Supreme Court emergency applications, appeals and judicial review
• advising in relation to protected disclosures and whistleblowing
• advising on regulatory change management
• advising on data protection, freedom of information and cyber risk