Eight new appointments have been made to the board of the HSE, including a UCC professor of law as deputy chair.

The eight will join chair Ciarán Devane, appointed in September 2018.   

The new appointees announced today are:

• Fergus Finlay, former chief executive of Barnardos,
• Tim Hynes, group chief information officer, AIB,
• Deirdre Madden, professor of law at UCC and chair of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance, who will serve as deputy chair,
• Dr Sarah McLoughlin, patient advocate and science and communication officer at Retina International,
• Mark Molloy, quantity surveyor, member of the expert group on tort reform and management of clinical negligence claims,
• Aogán Ó Fearghail, former GAA president,
• Fiona Ross, chair of CIE and Mental Health Ireland, and

Dr Yvonne Traynor, vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs with Kerry Group.   
One more position will be announced in the coming weeks, in the area of financial planning and management. 

Under the new Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2018, to be enacted shortly, the board will be the governing body of the HSE and will be accountable to the Minister for Health for the performance of its functions.

The chief executive of the HSE will be accountable to the board which will be appointed on an administrative basis until the legislation has passed. 

Healthcare law

Deputy chair Deirdre Madden BCL, LLM, BL, PhD, is Professor of law at University College Cork. Her research interests are healthcare law and ethics.

Author

She was the author of the Madden Report on Post Mortem Practice, chaired the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance, and has been a member of numerous expert groups providing expertise on issues related to medical law, ethics and patient safety. 

Professor Madden also has extensive experience of professional regulation. Most recently she was a member of the Independent Review Group examining the role of voluntary organisations in health and social care.