TOONAGH native Kathleen Lynch is one of seven nominees by President Catherine Connolly to serve on the Council of State.
President Connolly confirmed her seven appointments to the Council of State last week with sociologist Lynch amongst them.
In addition to the President’s seven nominees, the Council of State also consists of the following 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 plus every aable and willing to act as a member of the Council of State who has previously held the office of President, Taoiseach or Chief Justice.
Born into a farming family in Toonagh, her brother Michael is a former Chairperson of Clare IFA serving in the role from 2008 to 2012. She is one of four siblings.
Kathleen is Professor 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 and is currently an elected Executive Member of the Global Forum for Rehumanizing Education. 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.
She started her career as a social worker in Dublin’s north-inner city and what she witnessed in the job sparked her passion for social justice. Kathleen took her insight of poverty to the highest level of academia. She focused her early studies on education and, along with Dr Anne Lodge of NUI Maynooth, produced Equality and Power in Schools (2002), a major work on the subject of education access and attainment.
In Diversity at School (2004), Lynch and Lodge again examined the subject of education inequality, this time under the nine grounds covered by equality legislation, gender, marital status, family status, age, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion and membership of the Traveller community. Over more recent years she has published and lectured widely on
affective (care-related) equality. She was a regular pundit on Tonight With Vincent Browne on TV3.
Through research, education and activism, she has devoted her life to advancing equality and social justice. 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 (2005). Her work involved developing and establishing and teaching graduate, undergraduate and Outreach programmes in Equality Studies and Social Justice over a 30-year period.
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.
Other nominees include, Linda Ervine who is the manager of the first Irish language centre to be based in a loyalist area and received an MBE in 2021 for her work promoting the Irish language, she is a sister-in-law of the late Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is a globally recognised international law and human rights expert. She is currently Professor of Law at the Queens University, Belfast, 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh is former President of University of Galway. 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.
President Connolly acknowledged the seven for agreeing to serve on 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”.
Since becoming Ireland’s tenth President, the Galway woman who is married to Ennis native Brian McEnery has taken a policy of not speaking to the media.
