The Irish Independent’s 2025 feeder schools data revealed that 59% of students from DEIS schools progressed to third-level education, a drop from 64% in 2024. This finding contrasts sharply with the 91% of students from fee-paying schools progressing to third level in 2025, illustrating an increasing class divide in access to higher education.
These growing issues, however, are by no means unique to higher education. Socio-economic background continues to dictate the makeup of the legal profession, with the bar in particular facing ongoing challenges with diversity. For students from DEIS schools, the prospect of becoming a barrister one day remains largely out of reach.
Rebecca Hanratty, a former student at Castlebayney College – a DEIS school in Co. Monaghan – now a practising barrister- reflects on her experience:
“It wasn’t anticipated that the majority of people in my school would go to higher education for a Level 8,” Hanratty recalls. “People going to UCD would be quite rare, and Trinity even rarer. The last person in my school who went to Trinity was five years before me.”
Hanratty decided she wanted to study law when her dad bought her a copy of Mary Robinson’s autobiography during her second year of secondary school. “I saw that she studied Law and French Law at Trinity and went on to become a barrister,” Hanratty says. “I said to myself, ‘I’ll do the same thing.’”
When she later told her school guidance counsellor that she was travelling to England for law interviews, the reaction was one of bewildered surprise.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Hanratty remembers her counsellor saying, “We’ve never had anyone do this before.”
Defying the status quo at her school, Hanratty remained true to her word and followed in Robinson’s footsteps, securing a place at Trinity College to study Law and French Law. Out of the 130 students in her year, Hanratty became one of only 6 to go on to train at the bar, having been awarded the prestigious Denham Scholarship.
The Denham Fellowship provides two scholarships annually to aspiring barristers from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, covering the €13,500 cost of training at The King’s Inns. Securing one of these “golden tickets” into the profession is, however, by no means an easy feat.
“It was the most intimidating thing I have ever done,” Hanratty says, reminiscing on the interview process.
“I walked into a tiny room. It still gives me nerves now going back into it. I was greeted by a panel of twelve people, including former Chief Justice Susan Denham, who proceeded to grill me to test how capable I was at advocating for myself.”
A week later, Hanratty received a call confirming she had secured the scholarship.
Upon starting her training at the bar, Hanratty’s good fortune continued when she was assigned former Supreme Court judge and President of the High Court, Mary Irvine, as one of her mentors under the fellowship scheme.
“It was a bizarre but amazing experience,” Hanratty says. “I went from never having met a barrister before in my life to having coffee with a Supreme Court judge.”
For Hanratty, the mentorship was the most valuable part of the experience. “I didn’t know anyone in law. If you are like me and went to a DEIS school, you likely don’t have someone in your phone book that you can turn to for help, unlike the majority of my colleagues, who would have a barrister connection, whether it’s a relation or a family friend. For us, there’s not a hope of that.”
The lack of diversity at the bar remains a persistent problem, one that Hanratty has witnessed firsthand during her time working as a barrister.
“The bar is still pretty homogenous. You need a certain amount of family money behind you to do it. The majority of people would have gone to private schools and graduated from UCD,” says Hanratty. “There are two Denham Fellows each year, but that’s it for people who come from a socio-economically disadvantaged background.”
Reflecting on the importance of diversity at the bar, Hanratty highlights the tangible impact it can have on clients’ experiences with the legal system.
“By coming from a different background than the majority of privately educated white men, you bring a totally different perspective,” she says. “You’re often much more relatable to clients when you meet them.”
“Many people find it easier to identify with someone who might be an immigrant, or comes from a different socio-economic background,” she adds. “Clients appreciate that a lot more.”
While Hanratty’s journey to the bar is inspiring, she remains one of the rare few from a DEIS background to achieve such a feat. The extreme costs involved in training at the bar, coupled with the mandatory one-year unpaid work experience requirement in Dublin, put the career on a pedestal that only the most financially privileged can reach.
Addressing the Diversity Problem
The ‘Look Into Law’ TY programme is one initiative launched by The Bar of Ireland to increase diversity within the legal profession. The programme was one of Hanratty’s first insights into law and has now become an important initiative she works on every year.
The week-long programme consists of job shadowing, mock trials, talks by barristers and members of the judiciary, and tours of the Law Library, the King’s Inns, and the Four Courts. The programme reserves 40% of its places for students from DEIS schools, giving young people who wouldn’t traditionally encounter the bar the opportunity to experience the profession firsthand.
Another valuable initiative, closer to home, is UCD’s ‘Law in the Classroom’ module. This programme is offered to final-year law students in UCD and is aimed at diversifying the legal profession. Participating students teach in DEIS primary schools across Dublin, working to demystify the legal profession for younger students. The programme culminates in a mock trial held in UCD.
When asked how to encourage more students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue a career, Hanratty emphasised: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Role models are crucial to increasing diversity. “For me, when I was in school, there was no such thing as a Denham fellowship barrister. If there had been someone I could have seen do it before me, it would have been a lot easier,” she says.
If “you can’t be what you can’t see,” then law cannot be what it doesn’t represent. The law is meant to reflect our society, our views, and a collective sense of justice. Yet this ideal is difficult to reconcile with the current makeup of the legal profession, which reflects and caters to a narrow cross-section of society. If the law is to serve society truly, it must first align with and represent it.
By Beatrice Drummond, Contributor