[Back row, L-R: Kathleen Leader, Niall Walsh, Prof Joe Barry, Christine Littlefield, Senator Ivana Bacik (IPRT Patron), Paul Mackay, Johnny Connolly, Paddy Richardson; front row, L-R: Seamus Taylor, Dr Azrini Wahidin, Eddie D'Arcy, Dr Mary Rogan, Claire O'Regan. Photo: Derek Speirs.]
Dr. Mary Rogan (Chair)
Mary is a lecturer at the School of Social Sciences and Law at Dublin Institute of Technology. She did her PhD on Irish prison policy and she has published on criminal law, criminal justice and penology.
Eddie D’Arcy (Vice-Chair)
Eddie is Youth Work Services Manager for Catholic Youth Care, an organisation committed to youth work responses that are caring and compassionate, offering support and a variety of training and recreational programmes.
Paul Mackay (Treasurer)
Paul Mackay is a practising Charter Accountant. He served on the Mountjoy Prison Visiting Committee for several years and was an outspoken critic of the conditions in the prison during his time on the Committee. He also served as a member of the Parole Board until recently. Paul is Chairman of CAP-Care after Prison, a community support charity assisting ex-prisoners who reside in and/or from Dublin Postal Districts 2 & 8. CAP is a partnership between Whitefriar Street Carmelite Community Centre and City of Dublin YMCA.
Prof. Joe Barry
Joe is Chair of Population Health Medicine at the Department of Public Health & Primary Care, Trinity College, Dublin. He is co-author of 'Primary medical care in Irish prisons', BMC Health Services Research, 10 (2010)
Johnny Connolly
Johnny is a criminologist in the Alcohol and Drugs Research Unit of the Health Research Board. He has researched and written on community policing, drugs and crime and alternatives to imprisonment. At present he is conducting a major study on Ireland's illicit drug market for the National Advisory Committee on Drugs.
Kathleen Leader
Kathleen is a practising barrister, working in the area of criminal law and specialising in constitutional law. She has been junior counsel since 2002 and works in the Dublin and Eastern circuits. Prior to being called to the bar, she worked in the office of the Chief Prosecution Solicitor.
Christine Littlefield
Christine Littlefield works as a senior manager with Depaul Ireland, a cross border organisation working to support people who experience homelessness and marginalisation, including people who have experiences of imprisonment and those released from prison.
Paddy Richardson
Paddy is Chief Executive of IASIO – the Irish Association for the Social Integration of Offenders (formerly the BITCI Linkage Programme), the only national community based organisation for adult offenders in the criminal justice system, providing direct services to offenders both in the community and in all Irish prisons. Paddy was previously an Independent Councillor and is currently on the board of PROTECT N&S, a collaboration between the probation organisations in Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Seamus Taylor
Seamus Taylor is a Lecturer in Social Policy Studies in the Department of Applied Social Studies, NUI Maynooth. He has worked as Director of Equality and Diversity at the public prosecution service for England and Wales and as Director of Strategy at the Commission for Racial Equality, as well as working in local government and serving on a number of national bodies in Britain. He is currently a member of the UK based Hate Crime Research Group. Seamus was awarded a CBE in the British Honours system in 2010 in recognition of work on equality in the UK legal system.
Dr. Azrini Wahidin
Azrini Wahidin is a reader in criminology and criminal justice at the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen's University Belfast. She is chair of the Professional Ethics Committee for the British Society of Criminology and has served as a trustee for the Howard League for Penal Reform. She is also on the editorial board for The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice and the Prison Service Journal.
Niall Walsh
Niall is a graduate of the Trinity Access Programme at Trinity College Dublin and holds a degree in Social Science and a Postgraduate Diploma in Adult and Community Education from National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Niall is involved with prison education and the education and support of prisoners post-release.
Dr. Kevin Warner
Kevin Warner was Co-ordinator of Education in the Irish prison system for nearly 30 years until 2009, and was centrally involved in its development during that period. He also has considerable experience of this field in Europe and North America, and was founding Chairperson of the European Prison Education Association. He was awarded a PhD by UCD in 2009, on the topic Resisting the New Punitiveness: Penal Policy in Denmark, Finland and Norway. He is adjunct lecturer in the UCD School of Applied Social Science.