The Government have appointed District Court Judge Victor Blake to the Irish Legal Terms Advisory Committee.
From 1981 to 2006, Mr Blake ran his own practice in Lucan, Co. Dublin. He qualified as a solicitor in 1979 and received a B.A. in Mathematics, History and Sociology from St. Patrick’s College in 1974.
The Irish Legal Terms Advisory Committee comes under the aegis of the Department of Justice and Equality. It was established under the Irish Legal Terms Act, 1945 which authorises for ‘the provision, for the purposes of law, of standard equivalents in the Irish language for certain terms’ and provides for the ‘publication of legal forms and precedents in the Irish language’. It also provides for the appointment of a Judge of the Supreme or High Court, a Judge of the Circuit Court and a Judge of the District Court, a barrister, a solicitor, a member of the Translation Section of the Houses of the Oireachtas and such other members as the Government decides to constitute the Irish Legal Terms Advisory Committee.
According to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense Alan Shatter TD, the Committee is due to undertake “a substantial body of work, particularly in the coming months, as my Department is placing the Irish translation of the Forms in the Rules of the Superior Courts, 1986 before it for verification and also will be recommencing publication of Irish Legal Terms Orders to replace the Orders making up the collection of legal terms Téarmaí Dlí, which has long gone out of print”.