About

Continuing to impress, Terence G. O’Keeffe, law agent of Dublin City Council provides an impressive array of technical and managerial skill to the governing of the legal department in Ireland’s largest city council. In the role since the early 1990s, O’Keeffe has made his mark on the department in terms of modern succinct management. He has made significant changes to the way the department is run, was successful in increasing the professional staff and in initiating a policy of having legal input to major projects for Dublin at the early stages of his tenure. He continues to modernise and has a seat at the Dublin City Council senior management team with input into to all management decisions at early stages and effective risk management. He has worked on the development of a team of professional staff across several practice areas including litigation, property, commercial, data protection and GDPR, delivering legal services to all Council departments and senior management. O’Keeffe has initiated important developments for legal governance in Dublin by the setup of Ballymun Regeneration; the first company of its kind in the state set up to oversee the regeneration of an area that was seriously under privileged. Additionally, he brought the freedom of information and data protection function within the law department. O’Keeffe was appointed data protection officer for Dublin City Council and developed a Council-wide privacy management team with a privacy champion located in each area. He has been the president of the Local Authority Solicitors Bar Association for over 10 years responsible for the development and support of the sector. Recently, O’Keeffe has handled the management of the insurance function for the Council. He has led efforts leading to the repeal of Section 62 of the Housing Act 1966 concerning the recovery of possession of local authority housing and the rollout of the new procedures cognisant on the changes to legislation as a result of that litigation. Additionally, O’Keeffe arranged for the Council to form a new company when it was acquiring the East Link Bridge, he identifies that, ‘after a term of 30 years expired and the bridge was to revert back into the Council’s control. This was not done before so I had to engage in extensive due diligence to achieve’. Terence has completed diplomas in both domestic and international arbitration in 1998 and became a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He highlights that, ‘with this knowledge and expertise I ensured that much more in-house advice was given in relation to construction contracts and alternative dispute resolution. Most of the work had been outsourced up until then. With my involvement with CIArb I learned a lot about alternative dispute resolution and qualified as a mediator in 2007 and was chairman of the CIArb for a term’.