The Government has nominated Ms Justice Caroline Costello for appointment as the next president of the Court of Appeal.
The Cabinet on Tuesday approved the nomination of Ms Justice Costello, a serving judge of the Court of Appeal, for appointment by President Michael D Higgins to replace Mr Justice George Birmingham who retires in early August.
A native of Dublin, Ms Justice Costello is from a well-known legal and political family. She is a daughter of Declan Costello, a former Attorney General and former president of the High Court, and granddaughter of a former Fine Gael Taoiseach, John A Costello.
Having graduated from University College Dublin in 1982 with a BA in History and Classics, Ms Justice Costello later attended the University of Oxford and the King’s Inns. She was called to the Bar in 1988 and became a senior counsel in 2010. Her practice focused on commercial, banking and insolvency law
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She was appointed a judge of the High Court in 2014 and heard many high profile cases, including bankruptcy proceedings involving developer Seán Dunne.
She presided over the hearing of mammoth litigation against Facebook arising from complaints to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner by Austrian lawyer and data privacy activist Max Schrems over EU-US data transfers. She made a reference of key issues in that litigation to the Court of Justice of the EU which resulted in a landmark ruling on privacy rights.
She was appointed a judge of the Court of Appeal in 2018. Her appointment as President of that court would make her the second most senior judge in the State.
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