AIIHPC Board

The AIIHPC Board of Directors is responsible for ensuring and monitoring the effective management and governance of the business of the Company as prescribed within its Constitution and for overseeing its strategic direction

Fintan Fagan, Chair

Fintan Fagan became Chair of the All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care’s Council of Members in September 2018 and he became Chair of the AIIHPC Board in 2023.

In June 2015, Mr. Fagan was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of St. Francis Hospice Dublin. During the previous six and a half years, he worked at the Mater Private Hospital, Dublin, firstly as Chief Operations Officer and latterly as Deputy Chief Executive Officer. He was Secretary/Group General Manager of the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin for over six years prior to joining the Mater Private Hospital. Before then he was a Manager with the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God and worked as Secretary Manager of St Patrick’s Hospital/Marymount Hospice Cork from 1993 to 1996. He started his career in the U.K., working in various accounting positions with the Institute of Cancer Research, Royal Cancer Hospital, London.

Fintan holds an MBA degree in Health Services Management from the RCSI and UCD.

Bevan Ritchie

Bevan has worked within children’s healthcare for 25 years and graduated as a Children’s nurse in Oxford in 2002. With a special interest in children’s palliative care, he has worked across both the acute and community setting in Ireland and overseas. Bevan was Ireland’s first Outreach Nurse for Children with Life-Limiting Conditions in Ireland. Since moving to LauraLynn Children’s Hospice in 2012, he has held various senior clinical roles and now works as Head of Operations.

Mary O’ Brien

Mary is the Chief Executive Officer in Milford Care Centre which provides Specialist Palliative Care and Older Person Services in the Mid-West since March 2021.

A leading Healthcare Manager and Innovator Mary’s primary focus is to see and develop improvements in Health and Social Care every day. Mary has extensive healthcare experience in Community and Acute care, in Ireland and the UK. She has previously held a variety of Senior Managerial roles including Head of Service – Older Persons at HSE Mid-West Community Healthcare, General Manager at UL Hospitals Group, Interim Chief Director of Nursing and Midwifery at UL Hospitals Group.

A native of Limerick, Mary is an alumnus of the University of Limerick and University of Liverpool. In 2019 Mary achieved a First Cass Honours in the MSc in Supply Chain Operations and in 2023 completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Leadership. Mary is clinically trained as both as a Registered General Nurse and a Registered Midwife.

Mary brings a wealth of experience as an Executive Manager, Leader and Innovator with a proven track record working in challenging and busy environments. A history of consistently achieving strong results with practical, cost-effective approaches to service development, as well as forging partnerships beyond traditional Healthcare boundaries, Mary is a proven leader in accelerating Healthcare transformation.

Mary has served on senior leadership teams at both Aintree University Hospital Trust, Liverpool, UL Hospitals Group and HSE Mid-West Community Healthcare. She has been a key driver in the delivery of Person-Centred Care, along with a major focus in sustaining a quality and safety culture. Mary has consulted in the building of significant infrastructure for systematic quality and safety practice. Mary’s career has been dedicated to improving the patient’s experience.

Mary Flanagan

Mary is currently Interim CEO at Our Lady’s Hospice & Care Services. Previously she held the role of Director of Nursing Quality & clinical services. In this role she had responsibility for a number of inpatient services and community palliative care services in South Dublin and Wicklow. Mary has a vision of delivering an integrated service to all service users and quality of the service to the customer is the focus of all her work. She has been successful in getting funding to support research in her organisations and developing strategic partnerships with third level institutes.

Mary’s professional and academic qualifications include a being a Registered General and Psychiatric Nurse. She holds an MSc in Healthcare Management and a graduate award from the Irish Management Institute in executive healthcare leadership. Mary was appointed adjunct associate professor at the University College Dublin school of Nursing Midwifery and Health in 2015. In 2020 she was successfully admitted to Royal College of Surgeons Ireland as a fellow.

Monica Burns

Monica Burns is a global health development consultant, mainly working in less and least developed countries, often those in conflict or post-conflict situations. She has lived and worked in countries across the world for thirty years before returning to her native Belfast. In addition to consulting, she now teaches global health development at Queen’s University, Belfast and, occasionally, at Edinburgh University and Liverpool School of Tropical Health. Her interest in palliative and end of life care stems from her experiences with close friends and family members – and a desire to have some control over her own final days!

Prof Joanne Reid

Joanne Reid is a Professor of Cancer and Palliative Care within the School of Nursing and Midwifery, at Queen’s University Belfast.

Joanne has conducted multi-disciplinary national and international funded studies and her publications reflect the international multi-disciplinary teams she leads (Joanne Reid – Research output — Queen’s University Belfast (qub.ac.uk). Her research has been cited in evidence-based guidelines including: the Royal College of Nursing Nutrition and Hydration Care at End-of-Life guidelines; the British Columbia Centre for Palliative Care, Inter-professional palliative symptom management guidelines; and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Management of cancer cachexia guideline. These evidence-based guidelines are developed to translate current best evidence into recommendations for multi-disciplinary teams responsible for the identification and treatment of reversible elements of cachexia and improvement in quality of life for both patients and their carers.

Joanne is an International Council of Nurses, Global Nursing Leadership Institute scholar and a member of the World Health Organisation European palliative care expert technical group. Joanne has received several awards for her research including the Royal College of Nursing, Nurse of the Year Research award. Most recently, she was named as an international pioneering palliative nurse in 2021 by St Christopher’s Hospice London, recognised globally as a beacon of palliative care excellence. In 2022 was awarded a Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Fellowship Ad Eundem in recognition of her leadership and contribution to nursing research within the field of palliative care.

Trevor McCartney

Trevor is an experienced leader across both the public and private sectors. He has held senior roles in Telecommunications, Digital Transformation, Retail and Social Housing as well as Health and Social Care. He specialises in organisational transformation, strategy development, and the commercial development of organisations. He has led many significant and large-scale transformation programmes in each of the industries in which he has worked. He has a particular interest in driving social enterprise and social value and realising better commercial outcomes in the third sector to ensure sustainability for hospice services going forward. For the last six years Trevor has been the Director of Corporate Services in the Northern Ireland Hospice.