About Us
Paulyn Marrinan Quinn SC has worked in the area of ADRs since the 1990s. To develop standards of best practice and a centre of excellence in this field of work, she founded a Post Graduate programme in Trinity in 2000: Conflict and Dispute Resolution Studies – which she directs. From this grew Mediation Forum - Ireland one of the largest panels of qualified Mediators - a body prescribed by Ministerial Regulations under the Courts Act 2004 to nominate Mediators.
Paulyn has lectured and trained in this area extensively at home and abroad. She was invited by the Dept. Constitutional Affairs in the UK to address members of the Judiciary on Commercial Mediation in 2003 when they were introducing Court annexed Mediation services. As a member of the Bar Council's ADR and Arbitration Committee, she organised and lead Accredited Mediation training for members of the Irish Bar in 2004 and 2005. Among the professional groups she has trained are the Western Circuit of the Bar of England and Wales and the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland. She has also advised in relation to the creation of bespoke ADR, Arbitration, Dispute Resolution and Mediation Schemes.
As an active member of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association at the time of its inception and the Irish member of the Standards of Best Practice Sub-Committee which was charged with drawing up minimum standards applicable to a wide range of public and private sector Ombudsman offices throughout the UK and Ireland to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of such Offices, I was engaged in assessing service standards and quality benchmarks and service indicators.
During this time, I became sharply aware that whereas there were many University and other centres of research and study in relation to the emerging processes of ADR throughout the U.K and other European countries (as well as Canada, the U.S. New Zealand and beyond). Ireland, on the other hand, had come away from the 1980's experience of an attempt to provide mediation services in marital breakdown cases with a less than robust perception of the effectiveness of the concept. I set about enhancing the perception and practice of ADR processes.
I have been actively involved, on many levels, in the promotion and development of Civil and Commercial Mediation in this country as well as participating in the U.K. where my advice and contribution has been sought. I was invited to attend the inaugural meeting of the Civil Mediation Council (CMC) in 2002, of which I am now a member. The CMC, under the Chair of (Judge) Sir Brian Neill, is the body of service providers of mediation in the U.K. which focuses on, among other things, ethical matters and developments in relation to standards of accreditation and qualifications for practitioners in that jurisdiction.
These issues connect with the work in the CDRS programme in Trinity where some research and study topics are concerned with monitoring and maintaining ethical and practice standards - areas in which I have had a special interest over many years.
I was invited to sit on a 'think - tank' in the 1990's by the then Lord Chancellor's Office (LDC) in London when they were conducting a 'root and branch' review of administrative justice in light of the {then} Woolf reforms which were later to be enshrined in the Civil Procedure Rules which aimed at simplifying Court procedures and incorporated ADR giving rise, in 1999, to the inclusion of Civil Mediation in the realm of access to justice.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs (formerly the LCD), in the U.K. held a conference for the judiciary in October 2003, on Civil Mediation in light of their plans to launch Court annexed mediation schemes in the County Courts in England and Wales. I was invited to make a presentation to the conference on the merits of Commercial Mediation. It was interesting to note that the judges attended with their clerks and administrative teams as they properly recognize the need for such advances to be incorporated into the case management system as a whole.
