Dublin, Ireland
June 10-17, 2023

Director, Head of Client Strategies, HelpUsTrade. Professor Dermot Cahill is an Irish Solicitor and former Law School Dean with over 25 years experience specialising in the Law of the European Union. Dermot has worked in a variety of high-powered roles including as specialist National Legal Expert with the College of Europe in conjunction with the European Commission’s EU Internal Market Directorate on the EU’s 1992 Internal Market Program; as Antitrust and Corporate Finance Lawyer with major international Law Firms; as Senior Lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Dublin; and more latterly as Dean of the Law School at the University of Wales, Bangor, UK which saw the Law School ranked in the Top 20 UK Law Schools (out of over 125) at the time of his departure to HelpUsTrade in 2019. A graduate of the famed College of Europe, the oldest college exclusively devoted to European Studies, Professor Cahill bridges between the Common and Civil law worlds, with Professor Cahill (and teams he has led) being the recipient of many prestigious awards and accolades during the course of his career, including the Robertson-Horsington Prize, awarded in Paris in 2017, awarded by the British-Franco Lawyers Association to recognise Dermot’s contribution to excellence in developing a transnational law degree in English & French Law with Toulouse-Capitole I University, France. Recent major peer-reviewed pieces by Dermot are published in the Fordham Journal of International Law; World Competition; Harvard Celtic Colloquium, Public Contracting Law Journal and European Public Law. Long recognised as a leading authority in the field, known for his independence and rigour, Professor Cahill’s expertise has been recognised with many appointments, including service as: - Chair of the Irish Society for European Law and also Editor of the Irish Journal of European Law for many years. - Expert Member for House of Commons Parliamentary Inquiries into specialist subjects such as E-Invoicing; - Membership of the Wales Advisory Committee to the Law Commission of England & Wales; - Advising leading figures in the major UK political parties on government contracting “forward-thinking”, - Drafting Parliamentary Questions for the House of Commons Political Parties - Advising on conundrums relating to BREXIT. - External Examinerships in EU Law for 8 different Universities in Ireland and the UK, as well as acting as Examiner in EU Law for the two Professional Lawyers bodies in Ireland, the Law Society of Ireland and the King’s Inns. Over the last 20 years Professor Cahill has led major European cross-border competitiveness projects across several EU countries, funded by major international organisations including the European Union and the multilateral banks, including the World Bank, where his work has focused on Governance, Institution-Strengthening, Capacity-Building and public procurement workforce optimisation and professionalisation in Afghanistan led to the professionalisation of the National Procurement Institute’s civil service training programmes to international standards. Professor Cahill’s work as lead author in the Barriers to Procurement Opportunity Report in 2009 changed Government contracting policy in Wales, with his co-authored work being hailed by the UK Research Excellence Framework as being “international in quality, in terms of originality, significance and rigour” when assessing the Impact of his work on Society in 2014 (because it advanced steps to bring more Transparency to Government contracting). Professor Cahill’s work on the Barriers Report was hailed by Sir John McClelland in his Report Maximising the Impact of Procurement Policy in Wales (2012) as “outstanding evidence-based research”, and the Confederation of British Industry, which observed it was the “best piece of research” into procurement (government contracting) dysfunctionality seen for many years. Dermot also serves as Co-Director of the UMKC Ireland Summer Law Academy which brings US law students to Ireland to study EU Law and its implications for US Corporations doing business in Europe.