Irish Méndez Centre for Investigative Interviewing
The Irish Méndez Centre for Investigative Interviewing was launched on September 18th 2024 at a prestigious launch event, hosted at Dublin City University. The co-directors, Prof Yvonne Daly (Dublin City University) and Dr Alan Cusack (University of Limerick), both have specific research and teaching expertise in relation to police custody, investigative interviewing and criminal procedure.
The Irish Méndez Centre will act as an important hub to support those involved in investigative interviewing in policing and other contexts across Ireland. The Centre has already hosted a bespoke training session for specialist garda interviewers on interviewing individuals with Autism. Centre members have also engaged with non-police investigative interviewers in state agencies in Ireland, introducing them to the Méndez Principles and highlighting the reach of those principles to all investigations and information-gathering settings.
Current plans for the Irish Méndez Centre include the creation of an online repository on investigative interviewing; a workshop on memory, psychology and interviewing for practitioners across agencies and roles; a workshop focused on interviewing child victims of serious crime; training for lawyers on the Méndez Principles and their role in upholding procedural and legal safeguards; and more.
On April 16th 2025, the Irish Méndez Centre for Investigative Interviewing hosted a one-day training event for members of An Garda Síochána (the Irish police) centred on rapport-based interviewing and the ORBIT framework.
On April 28th 2025, the Irish Méndez Centre for Investigative Interviewing held an expert knowledge exchange event at the Trinity College Institute for Neuroscience.
For more details contact either yvonne.daly@dcu.ie or alan.cusack@ul.ie