Michael O'Flaherty

Professor Michael O'Flaherty is the current (September 2015) Director of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). The FRA is the EU’s human rights advisory body, based in Vienna, Austria. An Irish human rights lawyer, O’Flaherty was a member from 2004 to 2012 of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC), the expert body that oversees compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Again nominated by Ireland in 2008, O'Flaherty was re-elected to the HRC with the highest number of votes (136 states) achieved by any candidate. On 19 September 2011 he took up appointment as the third Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), the statutory national human rights institution for Northern Ireland. He resigned as chief commissioner in October 2013.

A native of Salthill in Galway, and the son and grandson of mayors of Galway, O'Flaherty attended school at Scoil Iognaid Gaillimh, Willow Park Preparatory School and Blackrock College, Dublin. He holds degrees in law from University College Dublin, in theology and philosophy from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and in international relations from the University of Amsterdam. Ordained in the 1980s as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Galway, he has not exercised priestly ministry since 1992. He has since been laicised.

Qualified as a solicitor in Ireland, he does not practice in the courts. Since completing his postgraduate studies he has worked mainly in the field of international human rights. From 2004 to 2012 he was Professor of Applied Human Rights and Co-Director of the Human Rights Law Centre at the University of Nottingham, England. In December 2012 he was appointed as Established Professor of Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway and Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights.

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