Prof. Yvonne Daly
Yvonne Daly, BCL (University College Cork), PhD (Trinity College Dublin) is Full Professor of Criminal Law and Evidence in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University, and co-director of the Irish Méndez Centre for Investigative Interviewing.
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. She is also one of four co-PIs on the ERC Synergy Grant JUSTICE - an ambitious, six year, interdisciplinary project on investigative interviewing across the globe.
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, and was a finalist for Law Book of the Year at the Irish Law Awards 2024.
In 2024, Prof Daly edited a first-of-its-kind volume on Police Custody in Ireland (Routledge) which is freely available to access online. In 2025 she joined Dr Liz Heffernan (TCD) in publishing the 3rd Edition of Evidence in Criminal Trials (Bloomsbury Professional).
Prof Daly is also very interested in legal education. She co-edited Teaching Evidence Law: Contemporary Trends and Innovations (Routledge,2020) with Prof Jeremy Gans (Melbourne Law School) and Prof P.J. Schwikkard (University of Cape Town). Part of Routledge’s series on Legal Pedagogy, this book, with a Foreword by Prof William Twining, sets out the contemporary experiences of evidence teachers in a range of common law countries across four continents. It addresses key themes and places these in the context of academic literature on the teaching of evidence, proof and fact-finding. The chapters describe innovative ways of overcoming the many challenges of this field, addressing the expanding fields of evidence law, how to reach and accommodate new audiences with an interest in evidence, and the tools devised to meet old and new pedagogical problems in this area.
Research Interests
Professor Yvonne Daly is an expert on effective criminal defence and the legal regulation of criminal investigations. She is currently leading an ERC Synergy project - JUSTICE (2026-2032) - with Prof Shane O'Mara (Trinity College Dublin), Prof Dave Walsh (De Montfort University, Leicester, UK) and Prof Bennett Kleinberg (Tilburg University, NL). She is also Vice-Chair of COST Action 22128 - ImpleMéndez (2023-2027). Along with Dr Alan Cusack (University of Limerick) she established and directs the Irish Méndez Centre for Investigative Interviewing.
Prof Daly has published widely on criminal justice matters, 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 Supreme Court Review; 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), Criminal Defence Representation at Garda Stations(Bloomsbury, 2023), and Evidence in Criminal Trials 3rd Edition (Bloomsbury, 2025); 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. She 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); Vice-Chair of the Ethical, Political, Legal and Philosophical Studies Committee of the Royal Irish Academy (2014-2018); and an elected member of the DCU Governing Authority (2021-2025). She is currently a Director of the Trust for Civil Liberties.
Prof Daly and the late Dr Vicky Conway undertook a research project on solicitors' experiences in Garda Síochána stations. This involved over 40 semi-structured interviews with criminal defence practitioners all around Ireland and the resulting book - Criminal Defence Representation at Garda Stations (Bloomsbury 2023) - provides both a narrative account of their experiences in relation to advising and representing detained persons and some guidance on how this might best be done.
In 2024, Prof Daly edited another first-of-its-kind book on Police Custody in Ireland (Routledge 2024), bringing together experts from policing studies, law, criminology, and psychology, to critically examine contemporary police custody in Ireland, what is known about it, how it operates, how it is experienced, and how it might be improved.
In 2025 she joined Dr Liz Heffernan (TCD) in publishing the 3rd Edition of Evidence in Criminal Trials (Bloomsbury Professional).