Chairperson
Dave Barrett
David’s career in financial markets spans three decades. With a background in investment management operations, foreign exchange, fixed income, commodities and derivatives, David has held leadership roles for several Irish and international financial institutions.
Company Secretary
Niall Behan
Niall is a CEO with over 20 years of experience leading NGOs focused on improving people’s lives through positive social change. He has a background in human resource management and social policy development.
He has been Chief Executive of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) since 2004. Niall is responsible for the development and implementation of the organisation’s strategic plan and is the accountable officer for the delivery of the organisation’s medical, counselling and education and advocacy departments.
Prior to working in the IFPA, Niall was the co-ordinator of a programme which secured over €200m in statutory agency investment in the Blanchardstown area and he previously worked as the Executive Director of The Employment Network, the Personal Assistant to the Minister for Social Welfare and an Associate Lecturer with the National College of Ireland.
In 1992, Niall was awarded a B.A. Industrial Relations & Personnel Management and in 1993, he was awarded an M.A. European Social Policy Analysis.
Treasurer
Derek Small
Derek is a senior finance executive with over 15 years’ experience in the telecommunication, cloud and medtech sectors, working from start-up level through to large multinationals. Derek has held several management positions in Financial Planning, Financial Control and Commercial Accounting throughout his career.
Derek currently works as Senior Director of Finance in Deciphex, an Irish start up in the digital pathology space. Previous to that, Derek was Finance Director for a NASDAQ quoted cloud tech company.
Derek has a degree and a Master’s in Electronic Engineering and is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
Trustees
Catherine Heaney
Catherine is an experienced strategic communications professional and has occupied leadership and Chairperson roles in the NGO, private and public sectors for more than 25 years.
Catherine is the CEO and Co-founding Director of CaraDem, an Irish-led independent organisation that partners with leaders across governance systems, from government institutions to civil society, to facilitate the development of enduring solutions grounded in democratic principles.
In 2026, Catherine was appointed as Honorary Consul of Mongolia to Ireland.
Dr. Conn Dorai Raj
Dr Conn Dorai-Raj (MSc., D.Couns.Psych., C. Psychol., Ps SI), is a Principal Counselling & Forensic Psychologist and Chartered Member of the Psychological Society of Ireland. His professional interests include trauma intervention, forensic assessment, child forensic interviewing, and rehabilitation of offenders.
In his primary role as psychology manager at The Alders Unit at Children’s Health Ireland, Conn works therapeutically with children and adolescents who have experienced sexual violence and conducts child forensic assessments and supports parents and carers of impacted young people.
Conn also carries out psychological and risk assessments for violent and sexual offending on people engaging with the criminal justice system. He has previously worked as a psychologist in the Irish Prison Service, where he had oversight of the Building Better Lives programme for sexual offending.
In his role as part-time lecturer, Conn also trains psychotherapy trainees on the MSc. in Psychotherapy at Dublin City University.
Dr. Sinéad Ring
Dr Sinéad Ring is an Assistant Professor of Law at the School of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University.
Sinéad’s research explores how law and society respond to the problem of sexual violence. Her PhD was on criminal prosecutions for non-recent child sexual abuse. She has recently published (with Kate Gleeson (Macquarie) and Kim Stevenson (Plymouth) Child Sexual Abuse Reported by Adult Survivors. Legal Responses in England and Wales, Ireland and Australia (Routledge, 2022). The book traces how child sexual abuse has been understood and governed by law since the Victorian period until the present and evaluates efforts in criminal law and tort law, as well as commissions of inquiry and redress schemes, to do justice to adult survivors reporting childhood sexual abuse.
In 2020 Sinéad was appointed by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee TD as a member of the Sentencing and Guidelines Information Committee of the Judicial Council. In 2018 Sinéad was appointed by Minister for Higher Education to Expert Advisory Group on Sexual Violence against Students, which drafted the world’s first national framework in this area, known as The Consent Framework. Sinéad continues her work in this area through her work with the Higher Education Authority’s Expert Group in Ending Sexual Violence in Higher Education.
Conall Harding
Conall is a HR Business Partner with Accenture Ireland. Conall’s work has involved supporting trust & safety and content moderation workforces for online platforms to protect against child sex abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Conall’s experience includes HR & Employee Relations coaching, change management, recruitment and performance management.
Conall holds an MSc in HR Management from UCD Smurfit Business School and also has certifications in HR Data Analytics and Mental Health First Aid.
Philip Lee
For over thirty years, Philip was the founding partner of Philip Lee LLP until his retirement in 2026. He is a leading expert in procurement, competition, trade and construction law. His extensive PPP experience includes roads, waste, wastewater and electricity PPP projects where he acts for both public and private bodies.
As an expert in European and Irish competition law, Philip has used his specialist knowledge and his expertise as a litigator in a variety of sectors including the construction, health, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, transport and energy sectors.
Philip has a well-established background in energy law and telecommunications regulation from his previous role as a legal advisor in the petroleum industry. He also worked as a consultant to a multinational enterprise on the application of EU and international law.
Philip is the author of “Public Procurement”, the first legal book on this topic, published by Butterworths in 1992. He has also published numerous articles on competition law and international trade.
Derek Nolan
Derek is a public affairs professional with 15 years’ experience in public policy, communications and stakeholder engagement. He is currently Policy and Partnerships Lead, Ireland and the Nordics at OpenAI.
He previous served as the Head of Public Policy for Airbnb Ireland and as a Labour Party TD for Galway West in the 31st Dáil from 2011-2016. Post politics, he lived in Australia for five years where he worked as Airbnb’s policy lead for Australia and New Zealand as well as in senior roles in the trade union movement and in consulting.
A qualified solicitor, Derek studied law at the University of Galway and obtained a Master’s degree in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights.