About

Richard Henry, head of legal and corporate affairs, has led the legal team of two lawyers and two support staff at Beauparc Group through a period of development and change. As the legal and compliance function at Beauparc has grown, it has pushed hard to keep as much legal work in-house and limit the use of external counsel. Beauparc Group own and operate some of the UK and Ireland’s most recognisable brands such as Panda, and Greenstar, covering domestic and commercial waste management, renewable energy supply, recycling collection and processing, logistics, green fuels and energy recovery. In September 2016, Panda acquired Greenstar in a deal that was hugely transformational as the Group almost doubled in size overnight. Regarding this, Henry says,‘we are on an acquisitive journey at present’. Richard Greene, a qualified barrister and key member of the team, rolled out Beauparc’s GDPR readiness programme and created, what Henry describes as ‘a massively important culture of awareness and top down governance oversight in privacy related matters at Beauparc’. The team also includes Allan Kennedy, a solicitor and an expert in litigation and dispute resolution, who acts as the most senior lawyer within the team. Henry identifies that in the current Irish market the cost of doing business is increasing along with regulatory controls making every organisation invest more in its compliance, particularly in terms of GDPR. Henry also believes that Irish organisations will need to ‘be on their toes and invest and empower management and create awareness and education programs for the new Criminal Justice, Anti-Corruption Offences Act 2018, which was signed into law and became effective on 30th July 2018. [It] closely mirrors the UK Bribery Act, but I believe this will have a huge impact (or should have) on how Irish organisations lawfully do business in the state, and also in the rest of the world, due to its extra territorial effect’.