Barrister Profile

Main Areas of Practice

Administrative Law or Judicial Review
Human Rights
Immigration
Public Inquiries

Biography

Darcy was called to the Bar in 2021 and completed pupillage with a Judicial Review practitioner.

Alongside a civil practise, Darcy has sought to develop a focus on public law within her practise taking instructions in a number of judicial reviews independently and also being led in some matters.

Darcy has also assisted in Inquiry work and prior to the Bar worked for the Truth Recovery Design Panel as a legal research assistant. In 2021, the Panel of Professor Phil Scranton, Dr Maeve O’Rourke and Deirdre Mahon were tasked by the Executive to design the exact form the inquiry or investigation into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in Northern Ireland should take and make other recommendations as to how the Executive should redress the historical wrong.

Darcy specialises in tribunal matters alongside her civil practise. She has accepted instructions in a range of tribunal cases and other niche appeals: Asylum, Child Tax Credit, Deprivation of Liberty, HIA Redress Board, Immigration, Mental Health, SENDIST, Social Security and Victim’s Payment Board.

Prior to her call to the Bar, Darcy worked in a law firm for a number of years as paralegal in a public law and civil litigation department. She assisted with high court actions, specifically clerical, historical institutional and healthcare facilities abuse cases, legacy cases and a wide variety of judicial review matters. She also submitted many applications for the Historical Institutional Abuse redress scheme on behalf of survivors and victims.

Qualifications

2021; Degree of Barrister-at-Law, The Honourable Society of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland

2021; Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Legal Studies (Distinction), Institute of Professional Legal Studies, Queen’s University Belfast

Finalist in the IPLS Internal Supreme Court Moot

2016; Bachelors of Law (Hons), University of Bristol

Experience

Published Judgments:

Re Abdul Said’s Application for Judicial Review [2023] NIKB 1

Abdul Said and the Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] NICA 49

Re Shima Esmail’s Application for Judicial Review[2024] NIKB 64