Mediators

  • Fiona Donnelly

    Fiona Donnelly

    Fiona Donnelly is a solicitor who specialised in family law.

    She is a senior lecturer and former associate director at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast.

    She has an LLM in Advocacy and is the Director of the Advanced Advocacy Course for the Law Society of Northern Ireland.

    Fiona chairs the Children Order Panel Accreditation Board for the Law Society of NI which is responsible for the accreditation and oversight of specialist family solicitors.

    Fiona is a leading authority on vulnerable witnesses and particularly on the needs of the child.

    Fiona works in USA, UK, Ireland and Australia.

    Fiona was appointed by the Lord Chancellor to sit on the Legal Services Commission and now sits as a member of the Board of the Westcourt Centre in Belfast.

    As former Associate Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, she was Head of Quality Assurance and member of the Education Enhancement panel of QUB.

    Fiona qualified as a Mediator from Pepperdine University Malibu in 2008. She provides training in Mediation and Negotiation to the legal profession.

  • Martin O’Brien

    Martin O’Brien

    Martin O’Brien has been a practising Barrister at the Bar of Northern Ireland for 30 years, specialising in employment and discrimination law. 

    He has a Masters degree in Human Rights and Emergency Law, and was an academic lecturer at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, for 19 years.

    Martin is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  Martin was called to the Bar of Ireland in 1998 and served as a part time Judge of Employment Tribunals from 1998-2009.

    He is also a part-time Judge of Appeals Tribunals, and an Adjudicator of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeal Panel. The Minister for Justice appointed Martin a Parole Commissioner in January 2017.

    In addition to sitting on a number of boards and committees, Martin was the Chairman of the Board of Governors of St. Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon, until 30 December 2019. He is a member of the Board of Governors of St. Mary’s University College, Belfast (a College of The Queen’s University, Belfast) and is also the Chairman of a children’s Safeguarding Advisory Panel.

    Martin has been a qualified Mediator since 2010 (Mediators’ Institute of Ireland), and qualified as an International Arbitrator with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in London in 2018.

  • Gemma Loughran

    Gemma Loughran

    Gemma Loughran, who is a recently retired County Court Judge, has a special interest in family law.  

    She was one of the authors of The Law on Children in Northern Ireland.

    Before being called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1989 Gemma was a principal lecturer in St Mary’s College and was a member of the Board of Governors of a number of schools, both primary and post-primary.

    She is an experienced marriage counsellor.

    She is a graduate of the Queen’s University Mediation Training Course.

  • Euan Shilliday

    Euan Shilliday

    Euan Shilliday is an accountant with over 30 years experience of all aspects of personal and commercial taxation and accountancy.

    He has expertise in tax and financial planning advice.

    Euan has extensive experience of mediating settlements of financial disputes to enable individuals and business to continue to develop.