Prof
Yvonne
Daly

Primary Department
School of Law and Government
Role
Professor of Criminal Law and Evidence
Yvonne Daly
Phone number: 01 700
6021
Campus
Glasnevin Campus
Room Number
C226

Academic biography

Yvonne Daly, BCL (University College Cork), PhD (Trinity College Dublin) is Professor of Criminal Law and Evidence in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. 

She is an expert on criminal evidence and procedure, with a specific research focus on effective criminal defence and the legal regulation of criminal investigations. She engages in doctrinal, comparative, and empirical research which explores the law in action. Her research advocates for the practical and effective protection of individual rights, specifically in relation to suspects under criminal investigation.  

Prof Daly is currently Vice-Chair of COST Action 22128 - ImpleMendez - which aims to develop research networks to support the worldwide implementation of the so-called “Mendez Principles” on effective investigative interviewing.

Prof Daly is committed to research with real-world impact. Her work on access to legal assistance in police custody, the right to silence, and the consequences of improperly obtained evidence was foundational to the creation of training for police station lawyers, which has been taken by lawyers from Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Scotland, Lithuania, Spain, and Poland. 

Prof Daly and the late Dr Vicky Conway worked closely together researching the right to legal representation in the pre-trial investigative stage. Their path-breaking book Criminal Defence Representation in Garda Stations (Bloomsbury) was published in 2023.

Research interests

Professor Yvonne Daly is an expert on effective criminal defence and the legal regulation of criminal investigations, and has published widely on these topics, both nationally and internationally. Her articles on the right to silence, the right to legal assistance, improperly obtained evidence, and related topics, have been published in the Journal of Law and Society; the Human Rights Law Review; the Journal of Human Rights Practice; the International Journal of Evidence and Proof; the New Journal of European Criminal Law; the International Journal of the Legal Profession; the Irish Criminal Law Journal; the Dublin University Law Journal, and more. She is a co-author of Irish Criminal Justice: Theory, Process and Procedure (Clarus Press, 2010). a co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology (Routledge, 2015), and sole editor of Police Custody in Ireland (Routledge, 2024).

Prof Daly led the Irish project team on the EU-funded SUPRALAT project, which developed and delivered a training programme for criminal defence lawyers on providing the best defence to suspects detained for police questioning, along with colleagues at Maastricht University, Antwerp University, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, and PLOT Belgium. 

Prof Daly was also the Principal Investigator for Ireland on another EU-funded project - EmpRiSe: Right to silence and related rights in pre-trial suspects’ interrogations in the EU: legal and empirical study and promoting best practice. This project examined the operation of the pre-trial right to silence in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Prof Daly and her team worked on this project with colleagues at Maastricht University, the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven.

Prof Daly has previously been a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland (2010/2011); a National Rapporteur on Criminal Procedure to the International Academy of Comparative Law (2010); a Director of the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development (ACJRD) (2015-2019); and Vice-Chair of the Ethical, Political, Legal and Philosophical Studies Committee of the Royal Irish Academy (2014-2018). She is an elected member of the DCU Governing Authority, and a Director of the Trust for Civil Liberties.
Prof Daly is also very interested in legal education and has written a number of articles in this area. She co-edited Teaching