The highest City & Guilds honour - Fellowship of the Institute - will be conferred on an Irish barrister at a ceremony in London today.
Mr Henry Murdoch (65) will receive the award at the Haberdasher's Guild Hall in London, for his professional achievements as well as his contribution to vocational education and training in Ireland.
Mr David Young, chairman of City & Guilds, said the fellowship was the highest award which the council of the institute could confer and was awarded in recognition of exceptional professional skills and achievement both within the workplace and in the wider community.
City & Guilds is one of the main awarding bodies for vocational qualifications. More than 400,000 people in Ireland have City & Guilds qualifications.
Mr Murdoch is chairman of the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire and is a non-executive director of First Active plc and Skillnets Ltd. The barrister is also the author of Murdoch's Dictionary of Irish Law, a standard text for law practitioners.
Other recipients of the fellowship honour include the film producer Lord Puttnam; Body Shop founder Ms Anita Roddick; the author and broadcaster Mr Charles Handy; and the Rolls-Royce chairman, Sir Ralph Robins.
Mr Murdoch first trained as a chartered engineer before being called to the Bar in 1966. He was the Irish universities' flyweight boxing champion in 1956 and an international judge for water-skiing in the 1960s.
