Heather Humphreys

Heather Humphreys T.D. was elected to Dáil Éireann in the 2011 general election and is the first woman ever to be elected for Fine Gael in the Cavan-Monaghan constituency.

 

She was appointed Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht on 11th July 2014.

Prior to being appointed to the Government, Heather served as a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure & Reform, the Joint Administration Committee and as a member of the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE).

 

Heather first became involved in politics when she was co-opted on to Monaghan County Council in 2003 and was twice re-elected in 2004 and 2009. In 2009, she was elected as Mayor of Monaghan County Council. She was previously Chair of the Council’s Strategic Policy Committee on Planning and Economic Development.

 

 

 

 

Seosamh Ó hÁghmaill

Secretary General of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs

 

He joined the Irish public service in the 1970s and has worked across a number of Government Departments, including the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, where he held the position of Policy Adviser on matters relating to arts, broadcasting, cultural institutions, heritage, the Irish language and the Gaeltacht, and the offshore islands.  Since November 2002, he has been an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. His responsibilities during that period have included the Irish language and the Gaeltacht, charities regulation, North-South co-operation, the community & voluntary sector, local & community development programmes, and the offshore islands, as well as a range of corporate functions including financial management, human resources and corporate governance.

 

 

 

 

Hugh Swift

Mr. Hugh Swift is a retired Ambassador of Ireland. During his career with the Department of Foreign Affairs, (now Foreign Affairs and Trade), he served as Director of the Irish Bilateral Aid Programme and represented the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the Boards of the Agency for Personal Service Overseas, and GORTA. He supervised Irish Aid’s disaster relief programmes in Somalia and Southern Sudan. As Ambassador, he worked closely with Irish Aid in a range of developing countries. From 1981 to 1990 he represented the Commission of the European Communities in (successively) Zambia and Tanzania, where a principal focus of his work was food security. He is a trained economist with a particular interest in the economics of development.

 

 

 

 

Paul Gleeson

Paul Gleeson was announced as Ireland’s first Consul General in Atlanta by Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen in July 2010. He took up office the following month and began the job of establishing Ireland’s first new Consulate in the United States since the 1930s. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin and the London School of Economics, Mr. Gleeson joined Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs in 2001.

 

He has served at the Embassy of Ireland in South Africa (where he had responsibility for reporting on political developments in Zimbabwe); at the Permanent Representation of Ireland to the European Union in Brussels; and at Ireland’s Mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Prior to taking up his post as Consul General in Atlanta,

 

Mr. Gleeson had responsibility for North-South cooperation within Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, helping to implement the all-island aspects of Ireland’s landmark 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement. He has also worked in support of Ireland’s development cooperation and aid programmes in Mozambique and Lesotho. Away from work, Paul is a fan of most sports, particularly football (soccer) and hurling. At university, he was Auditor (President) of the Trinity College Historical Society, the oldest undergraduate debating society in the world. He won the prestigious Irish Times Debating Competition and was a finalist at the World University Debating Championships. Paul is married to Alita Byrd. They have two sons, Zach and Daniel.