Speakers Biographies Conference 2016
Helen Guinan 
Helen Guinan spent most of her career working with, or on behalf of, children and young adults with intellectual, physical and sensory disabilities. Previously a Principal in St. Paul’s School in Cork, she has been closely involved over many years in policy development and implementation at national level with a number of organisations; including the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the National Council for Special Education and the National Federation of Voluntary Bodies. In this work, she gained a national and international perspective on advancements and improvements for persons with disabilities. She started her four year term of office as Chairperson of the National Disability Authority in 2014.
Damien English T. D. 
Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal
Damien was appointedMinister of State for Housing and Urban Renewal in May 2016. He works closely with his Fine Gael colleague Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Simon Coveney T.D. in providing political leadership on improving the supply of quality affordable homes for families, ending the homelessness crisis and regenerating communities.
He was previously Minister for Skills, Research and Innovation from 2014 to 2016, working across the key Government Departments of Education and Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation.
Damien was first elected to Dáil Éireann for Co. Meath in 2002, becoming its youngest member, and again for Meath West in 2007 and 2011. He was a member of Meath County Council from 1999 to 2004.
An experienced member of Dáil Éireann, he is a former Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, and its predecessor the Oireachtas Committee for Jobs, Social Protection and Education.
He was Fine Gael Spokesman for Small Business and Labour Affairs 2007-2010 and Deputy Finance Spokesman 2010 to 2011. Other Oireachtas Committee memberships have included Finance, European Scrutiny and the British Irish Inter Parliamentary Body.
Chair morning session: Dr. Conor Skehan (Chair of the Housing Agency)
Conor Skehan
Lecturer in DIT’s School of Spatial Planning and Transport Engineering, a chartered architect, impact assessor, landscape architect and planner. He is the former Head of the DIT’s Department of Environment and Planning, and Fellow of DIT’s Future’s Academy. His areas of expertise include Foresighting, Impact Assessment, Urbanism, Housing and Rural Planning. With Dr Lorcan Sirr of DIT he has written extensively on National Spatial Planning for Ireland’s future and more recently on planning of the Dublin region. Conor is a consultant to the UN’s Post-Conflict and Disaster management Unit and has advised on Disaster Risk Reduction and Impact Assessment in a number of missions for Iraq, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. He is former director of Bord na Mona, former Chairman of the Peatlands Council and currently serves as Chairman of the Housing Agency.
Victor Calise
While riding a mountain bike in Forest Park in 1994, Victor sustained a spinal cord injury that left him in a wheelchair and without the use of his legs.
Victor embraced this challenge. He got involved with disabled sports through United Spinal Association, and took up the sport of sled hockey. His dedication to the sport would take him to Japan in 1998 where he represented the United States on the sled hockey team in the Paralympics.
In 1997, he began working with United Spinal Association as Recreation Coordinator. He was promoted up the ranks until he reached the title of Director of Sports Marketing. In October of 2006, Victor took on a new challenge, joining the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation as ADA Coordinator.
The New York City parks system is a historic collection of properties, most of which were designed and built prior to accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While at Parks, Victor coordinated an effort, worked on by staff at all levels, to improve compliance with the ADA agency-wide. Additionally, Victor was tasked with preparing a transition plan to increase accessibility in the city’s parks, beaches, recreation centres and other facilities.
On February 17, 2015 Mayor Bill de Blasio reappointment longtime disability advocate Victor Calise as Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD). Victor was originally appointed Commissioner of MOPD by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in June 2012. While acting as the disability policy advisor to city agencies and the Administration, Victor’s other responsibilities include: working to spearhead projects, partnerships and initiatives that better the lives of people with disabilities; advocate for the passage of legislation that will help the disabled community; and acting as the Chair of the Accessibility portion of the 2008 NYC Building Code revision process.
Victor currently lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife and two children.
Eibhlin O Connor
Eibhlin O Connor is Senior Architect and Design Team Leader with Clúid Housing Association, the largest housing association in Ireland, with an ambitious programme for delivery of social housing across the country.
Eibhlin is a registered member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, a certified Passive House Designer and holds a post graduate diploma in Construction Law and Contracts Administration.
She is responsible for setting Clúid’s design standards, procurement and contract administration of Clúid’s construction program, which aims to deliver over 1,500 more homes in the next 3 years.
Eibhlin has extensive design and project management experience within the construction industry.
George Braddock
George Braddock pioneered the implementation of person-centred planning principles to homes for people with disabilities. In his 25 years as a licensed general contractor and housing consultant, he has been involved in more than 1,500 projects guided by these principles. Creative Housing Solutions, LLC was established so the knowledge and expertise gained from this significant work would be utilized elsewhere and continue to be improved upon. Work has been provided to families, provider agencies, non-profit housing organizations and governments. In addition to design and construction, his company has provided maintenance and repair services spanning decades on some projects. Mr. Braddock provides trainings, conducts workshops and presents at conferences introducing professionals, individuals, families and advocates to the critical role of the physical environment in shifting the balance for persons with developmental disabilities towards choice, control and participation in their homes.
Prof Mary Corcoran
Mary P. Corcoran is Professor of Sociology at Maynooth University where she is also a member of the University’s Governing Authority. She is a graduate of the University of Dublin, Trinity College and Columbia University, New York. Her research and teaching interests lie primarily in the fields of urban sociology, public culture and the sociology of migration, and she has published widely on these topics. In particular, she has been at the forefront of community studies in Ireland contributing to major national and international studies on precarity in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, European neighbourhood regeneration through partnership, the quality of life in social housing, civic, social and cultural life in the suburbs and the role of urban agriculture in social cohesion.
More recently, Corcoran has been developing her public culture work primarily through a series of collaborations with artists and arts practitioners. In 2015 she contributed an interpretive essay based on interviews with participants to House Portraits, the book documenting visual artist Mary Burke’s representations of home in West Tallaght. Mary P. Corcoran was a Taoiseach’s nominee to the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) for five years (2002-2007). She has previously served on the Senate of the National University of Ireland, on the Social Science Committee of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) on the Expert Advisor Committee of the Childhood Development Initiative and on the Board of City Arts. She is currently a Board member of the Childhood Development Initiative.
Workshop 1: Building Supportive Communities
Chair: Alison Harnett (Director of Policy, National Federation of Voluntary Bodies)
Alison Harnett
Alison Harnett is the Director of Policy with the National Federation of Voluntary Bodies, which is the umbrella group of voluntary/non statutory intellectual disability service providers in Ireland. As part of this role, Alison coordinates a number of projects that support people with intellectual disabilities and their families. The Next Steps Project is a community of learning of 25 service providers who are developing individualized supports to enable people to live a life of their choosing. The community of learning is entering its second phase; ‘Growing the Change’. The Informing Families Project developed evidence-based best practice guidelines and training for staff who inform families of the diagnosis of a child’s disability, and these are currently being rolled out nationally in Ireland and a number of other countries. Alison holds a B.Sc in Communications and is currently a doctoral candidate with the School of Psychology in University College Dublin, focusing on the early information needs of families of children with disabilities.
Ciaran McGroarty, St Michael’s House
Ciaran is 45 years old and lives in Clontarf. Ciaran enjoys listening to music and some of his favourite artists include Madonna, Elvis Presley and ABBA. He is also a keen movie fan and loves James Bond films. Ciaran is a very creative individual. He is a talented artist and loves drawing pictures of his friends and family. He also enjoys drawing and writing stories about Tracy Beaker, who is a character from a book that always gets into trouble. Ciaran loves showing his drawings to his friends and explaining the story to them. Ciaran loves writing and can often be seen carrying around a copybook and pen.
Ciaran attends Work Options, which is a day service of St. Michael's House. In Work Options Ciaran enjoys spending time with his friends and does Creative Art, English through Music, Cookery and the social group. Ciaran is a very chatty person and has lots of friends in Work Options.
After both Ciaran’s parents passed away he was assisted by his sister Sheila in applying to the HSE for a home care package. Ciaran is supported with the general aspects of daily living, e.g. personal care, meal preparation, shopping, household chores. He is also supported to access his local community and facilities. Ciaran has built up a good relationship with the support workers and the support has enabled him to remain in his own home and community, which is very important to him. Ciaran has been able to continue with his own routines which are long established and his family are delighted that he is been supported to remain in his own home.
Caren Gallagher
Caren is joint Director of Policy for the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH) with responsibility for providing a range of services to members, undertaking research projects and reports, and producing publications.
Before joining the ICSH in 2005, Caren worked as Project Manager for a social research company leading a diverse range of projects. She has an Honours degree in Geography from Queen University, Belfast and an MPhil examining urban social exclusion from Dublin Institute of Technology.
Lucia Carragher 
Dr. Lucia Carragher is a senior researcher in NetwellCasala, Dundalk Institute of Technology. Her research interests are focused on the psychosocial determinants of older adults' health, including social support, social participation and social capital. She has a particular interest the role of volunteerism in building supportive communities and in provision of dementia education to support families caring for someone living with dementia.
Workshop 2: Independent living by design
Chair: Kathryn Meghen, CEO Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland
Kathryn Meghen 
Kathryn Meghen is the CEO of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, an organisation with a far-reaching remit to promote, support and regulate the profession, and diverse audiences. As CEO she oversees the development and implementation of new RIAI policies.
Kathryn represents the RIAI on a number of external committees, including the Construction Industry Council. In 2015 Kathryn was on the Steering Board for Ireland’s Year of Design, ID2015. She is on the editorial board of Architectural Ireland and the RIAI Annual Review, Irish Architecture.
In her previous role, Kathryn was Deputy Director of the RIAI with particular responsibility for creating public awareness for the value that architecture brings to our built environment and to society. She has led the Institute’s strategic objective for internationalisation and led a number of architectural delegations to new markets for Irish architecture including Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and Chicago.
As part of the RIAI’s public awareness campaigns – and to raise funds to combat homelessness – Kathryn devised together with the Simon Communities of Ireland the annual RIAI Simon Open Door event. Now in its 12th year, RIAI Simon will have raised close to €600,000.
Her publications include the RIAI’s New Housing and New Housing 2 books as well as articles written for Architecture Ireland and National Media. She has contributed to conferences.
Orla Deighan
Orla is a Senior Occupational Therapist working in primary care community services in the North Dublin. She has a very keen interest in accessible housing.
Orla graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Occupational Therapy in 2003 from Trinity College Dublin. She began her career gaining experience in acute mental health, acute physical hospital setting, community mental health and community primary care services. In 2005 she moved on a permanent basis to her current post. Her role involves working in primary care, as well as a community based rehabilitation team which provides a specialised service to adults with physical and /or sensory disabilities and their home environment. This includes advising on housing adaptations. The overall goal is the enhancement of the individual’s capacity to function in their home environment.
Orla has a keen interest in accessible housing. She is actively involved in the Housing Advisory Group which is associated with the Association of Occupation Therapy Ireland. The work of this group involves organising housing conferences, housing courses, education components, submissions to relevant authorities and AOTI to inform policy, maintain links with specialist sections in housing Northern Ireland and UK. She is involved with a sub-group tasked with reviewing the resource “AOTI Housing Guidelines for Occupational Therapists”. This is expected to be ready for printing early in 2017.
Neil Murphy
Neil Murphy took up the post as Senior Built Environment Advisor at the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design (CEUD) in October of 2008. He is a graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street & Trinity College Dublin with an honours degree in Architecture. He is also a registered Architect with the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, MRIAI.
Neil has worked on a wide variety of projects in commercial Architecture in various Berlin & Dublin firms as both a Project & Site Architect for 12 years including winning an award for a boardwalk and river front amenity in 2007.
Neil was the project manager for the following; CEUD Building for Everyone series of booklets titled ‘Building for Everyone – A Universal Design Approach’
Research looking at Shared Space Design – ‘Shared Space, Shared Surfaces and Home Zones from a Universal Design Approach for the Urban Environment in Ireland’
The Home Design Guidance documents ‘Universal Design Guidelines for Homes in Ireland’ and ‘Universal Design Guidelines Dementia Friendly Dwellings for People Living with dementia, their Families and Carers’
Neil is also a member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland Universal Design (RIAI) taskforce and he has been a member of the Jury for the RIAI’s Annual Award for Universal Design for the past 4 years and was a member of the Irish Landscape Institute’s inaugural Universal Design Award jury for 2015.
Brian Swan
Brian is a Deputy City Architect with Dublin City Council. He has over thirty years experience in the public sector as an architect. Beginning with the then Dublin Corporation before moving to Dublin County Council and on to South Dublin County Council when newly formed. He was for thirteen years the Senior Architect with Kildare County Council and has been back with Dublin City Council the past eight years.
Workshop 3: Smart-en up your home; new technologies for independent living
Chair: Michelle Kearns (Office of the Chief Information Officer HSE)
Michelle Kearns – CCIO Informatics Lead
Michelle is a Health Informatician who currently works as the Informatics Lead with the Council of Clinical Information Officers, a network of over 200 clinicians, healthcare and IT professionals driving eHealth solutions across the Irish healthcare system. The main aim of the CCIO is to ensure that there is clinical engagement across all eHealth projects throughout Ireland that result in focused systems designed with user needs in mind to support the delivery of better, safer and more efficient care.
Michelle worked with the Caredoc out-of-hours GP service in Ireland as their ICT Manager since 2004. Michelle has a background in information and communications technology and in 2008 completed an MSc in health informatics and in health services research with the school of computer science and statistics in Trinity College Dublin. Michelle is now a doctoral candidate with University College Dublin with a focus on information systems and data analytics.
Michelle is passionate about health care and how technology can be utilised to benefit patients, clinicians and citizens.
.
Spyros Kotoulas
Spyros Kotoulas is a Research Scientist at IBM Research Ireland and the Manager of the Health and Person-Centred Systems research group. He is working on improving Healthcare and Social Care for vulnerable populations, aiming a better experience for the individual, increased effectiveness and reduced cost. His aspiration is to build personalised and person-centric systems that will positively disrupt the management and delivery of care.
Rodd Bond
Rodd is the founder and director of NetwellCASALA and an architect by background. Rodd has a wide range of interests including creating and sustaining healthy communities and homes; the inter-relationship between environment and peoples’ health and wellbeing; organic design methods and community decision-making frameworks. Rodd is past President of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce and continues to hold a strong interest in local policy and business. Rodd has secured over €10m funding for NetwellCASALA since 2006.
Estefania Guisado Fernandez (Connected Health Project at CHESS UCD)
Estefanía Guisado is the CHESS ESR involved in the Project “Caregiver control platform of multimorbid disease management”, focused in dementia patients, that takes place at the University College of Dublin (UCD). She got her degree in Medicine in 2010 and during that year, she become part of the Sports University Medical team, where she worked and learned from other Sports Doctors and Physiotherapists. After finishing it, she decided to specialize in Physical and Rehabilitation medicine, where she could be in contact with a very diverse type of patients, including sports and musculoeskeletical medical conditions, neurology, orthopedics, cardiology, and much more specialities related to deal with disabilities and aimed to improve the quality of life of the patients and the general population. During this period, she did some special secondments in amputee, vestibular rehabilitation, ultrasound guided techniques for diagnosis and treatment and a special one at the neurorehabilitacion unit at King´s College Hospital in London, with the objective to get management in the use of Botulin Toxine for spasticity in neurological disorders. Furthermore, she got a masters degree in Neurophisiology and Neuroscience in 2013 and now she is inmersed in another one in Acupuncture, to develop a new skill in control and treatment of chronic pain (apart from other medical chronic and acute conditions) as part of the usual and daily treatments in the Pain Units.
She has worked as medical advisor for an Android app called “Fitness Park”, aimed at facilitating the use of the exercise machines availables in our parks for our seniors, which has nearly 1000 downloads.
Now, she´s into her PhD and looking forward to become a Connected Health expert to continue working and helping in the development of the telemedicine and the telerehab, and also to encourage more clinicians and health professionals to take part of this present future.
Closing Session
Siobhan Barron
Siobhan Barron is the Director of the National Disability Authority (NDA) which is an independent statutory body established to provide information and advice to the Government on policy and practice impacting on the lives of people with disabilities. Through its research, advice and role the NDA aims to support and monitor the effective development and delivery of co-ordinated cross-government action on disability and the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to ensure people with disabilities can participate as valued citizens in the mainstream of Irish society and can live the lives they want to lead. The NDA also has a key role in promoting universal design of the built environment, services, products and information and communications technologies to benefit the wider population through its statutory Centre for Excellence in Universal Design. The Centre promotes excellence in universal design through standards, practice, education and awareness, in order to facilitate participation in Irish society by people regardless of age, size, ability or disability.
