Our people - Barry Finnegan

Barry Finnegan is a Programme Director and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications in Griffith College. He holds an MA in International Relations from Dublin City University, is a researcher with ATTAC (Ireland), a co-facilitator with the TTIP Information Network, and a member of the Steering Group of Headline: the National Media Monitoring Programme for Mental Health and Suicide.

His research on the evolution of European Union international trade policy and civil society’s responses to it, has led to Barry presenting to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs and to the government’s civil service TTIP negotiating committee. Barry’s media industry and EU trade policy research has also led to regular appearances on Newstalk national radio, numerous presentations at meetings around the country, and to public debates with the likes of Mark Redmond, Chief Executive of the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, and Dan O’Brien, Chief Economist at the Institute of International and European Affairs.

In 2016 Barry presented his research at conference in Trinity College and at the comparative international law conference at Griffith College in June 2016 focusing on how European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law would appear to demonstrate that the ISDS (ICS) component of a number of pending EU free investment and trade agreements is in fact illegal under EU law, and also how the EU Council of Ministers appears set to undermine the legitimacy of the EU institutions and of EU trade policy itself by implementing a “provisional application” of parts of these free investment and trade agreements prior to acceptance of them by the Member States’ national parliaments and prior to a ruling on their legality by the ECJ, thereby allowing non-EU companies to legally challenge all EU and Members State directives, laws, regulations and licencing procedures in a non-EU, private, foreign investors’ arbitration mechanism, where only non-EU companies can sue for punitive financial compensation should any directives, laws, regulations or licencing procedures be deemed to be construed by as unnecessary, non-tariff barriers to trade.

One of Barry’s other main research and lecturing interests include the role in democratic societies of, and funding models for, investigative journalism. Barry publishes the Griffith Book of Investigative Journalism which is a compilation of our media faculty students’ investigate journalism news reports.