Career Biography

Alan Daly is Group Head of Legal at ESB, Ireland’s state-owned energy company. He joined ESB in May 2011 and has overall responsibility for ESB’s in-house legal team, which provides legal advice and transactional support to all core areas of ESB’s businesses in Ireland and abroad, including ESB International, ESB’s international engineering consulting business. Alan is an Irish solicitor with extensive Irish and international experience. Prior to joining ESB, he was Assistant General Counsel with Global Crossing, a US-owned operator of a global fibre optic network. He worked with Global Crossing for eleven years, based in New York and Dublin, and before that as legal counsel with IBM Ireland and in the commercial department of McCann FitzGerald (Dublin and New York). Alan has been recognised in the Legal 500 General Counsel Powerlist for Ireland since 2015; his legal team at ESB was recognised in the Legal 500 list in 2016 for In-House Legal Teams, shortlisted for an award at the 2019 Lexology/ACC European Counsel Awards, and named Public Sector In-House Legal Team of the Year at the 2019 Travelers Irish Law Awards.

Alan holds a BComm (UCD), a Diploma in Legal Studies, and qualified as a solicitor in 1995.

As to the ESB in-house legal team, it consists of 50 staff members supporting ESB’s workforce of more than 7,000 employees. It is the first point of contact for all legal issues arising in ESB’s domestic and international operations in the generation, supply, and transmission of electricity, and in its energy consulting business. The team provides legal assistance and support across a wide range of areas of law, focusing in particular on six core areas: corporate and commercial law, regulatory and competition law, employment and industrial relations law, litigation and dispute resolution, commercial property, and planning and environmental law. Other areas of practice include EU law, procurement law, data protection, company law, and health and safety law.