Membership

Mr Ray Parle (Interim Chair)

Mr Parle has been employed in the Irish Health Service Environmental Health Service since 1980, including as a Principal Environmental Health Officer since 1993. He was awarded Master of Science Degree in Environmental Health Risk Management (Dublin Institute of Technology, 2001). Dissertation subject was Risk Management of Drinking Water Fluoridation Systems in the South-East of Ireland.

He was a member of the previous Irish Expert Body on Fluorides and Health (2004-2017), is a member of the HSE tender assessment groups for supply of hydrofluosilicic acid for the State, and is a member of the Health Service Executive national steering group on fluoridation. He has been a member of the HSE National Drinking Water Group since 2008 (he chaired it from December 2015 to December 2019). He has been a member of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland Scientific Committee for over 10 years. Mr Parle’s area of expertise is Environmental Health Risk Management.

Professor Blánaid Daly (Interim Vice-Chair)

Professor Blánaid Daly BA BDentSc FFGDP (UK ) PhD FFPHM FHEA is Professor/Consultant in Special Care Dentistry in the Dublin Dental University Hospital. Professor Daly qualified from Trinity College Dublin in 1983 and first worked in the Health Board Services in Ireland, followed by six years at the Dublin Dental Hospital. She moved to London in 1990 joining King’s College London and completed her PhD on the oral health needs of homeless people. She is a specialist in Dental Public Health and Special Care Dentistry and was made academic/discipline lead for Special Care Dentistry at King’s College London Dental Institute in 2010. She returned to Dublin Dental University Hospital in August 2016.

Dr Gerard Colleran

Dr Gerard Colleran joined the academic staff of Institute of Technology Tallaght in 1998. He lectures in the field of Microbiology and related areas, including the control of microbiological contamination within hospitals and manufacturing industries.

 A graduate of the National University of Ireland Galway, where he was awarded a BSc Honours Degree and PhD in Microbiology, Dr Colleran had previously worked at the National Diagnostics Centre and at Olympus Diagnostica GmbH as a microbiologist, prior to joining  Institute of Technology Tallaght. He has been invited to lecture on a number of occasions at the Nanjing University of Technology in the delivery of the Institute’s educational programs in China.

His academic interests have included the development of DNA technologies to detect anaerobic toxic spore-forming bacteria (clostridial species), advancements in the forensic microbiology of drugs (in collaboration with the State Forensic Science Laboratory) and innovation in the area of on-line education for the continual professional development of Irish hospital staff. He has also had some media involvement while at the Institute, and has appeared on national radio and television and in the print media on microbiological matters of public interest.

Dr Una Fallon

Dr Una Fallon MB MA (Heath Promotion) MSc (Epidemiology, LSHTM) MICGP MRCGP FFPHMI FFPH (UK) is a Specialist in Public Health Medicine with the Health Service Executive.

Dr Fallon graduated in Medicine from the National University of Ireland Galway in 1990. After completing vocational training in General Practice in Galway she undertook Higher Specialist Training in Public Health in Bristol, UK. She is former Chair of the HSE National Drinking Water Group, Chair of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Research Ethics Committee and former Vice-Chair of the Board of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine,  Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Her interests include evidence-based public health practice, epidemiology, environment and health and research ethics.

Professor Máiréad Harding

Professor Máiréad Harding is Director of the Oral Health Services Research Centre, University College Cork (UCC) and Professor in Dental Public Health and Preventive Dentistry (appointed in 2021), University Dental School & Hospital, University College Cork (UCC). Professor Harding is senior lecturer in dental public health in Cork University Dental School and Hospital, University College Cork (UCC) and senior dental surgeon with the Health Service Executive.

She is currently the programme coordinator on the Fluoride and Caring for Children’s Teeth a six-year collaboration between UCC and the HSE dental services with Health Research Board funding (FACCT: https://www.ucc.ie/en/ohsrc/research/facct/ ). She is a BDS (NUI) graduate from UCC and was also awarded a Masters in Dental Public Health (MDPH) and PhD in Dentistry from UCC.

Mr Michael Madden

Mr Michael Madden is a Chartered Engineer and a water industry Asset Manager with almost 20 years’ experience in the design, delivery, and operation of critical water and wastewater infrastructure in both the public and private sectors, as well as across Europe as a technical expert with CEN, the European Committee for Standardization. Mr Madden is the Water Treatment Asset Planning Specialist in the Asset Management function of Irish Water, where he represents the utility at the HSE’s National Fluoridation Steering Committee.

Dr Therese Montgomery

Dr Therese Montgomery (Research PrincipaI Investigator, Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions) has been researching and publishing in Neurotoxicology for the past 12 years. Having obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from UCD in 2009, she was awarded a prestigious Marie Curie Research Fellowship in 2010, under which she relocated to the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Awarded a Visiting Lectureship in 2012, Dr Montgomery returned to the Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, UCD.

She took up her current Lectureship position in Toxicology and Biopharmaceutical Science in Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) in 2013 and is actively engaged in student outreach and academic affairs. A member of AIT academic council and the Irish Teaching Council, she is also an external examiner for Waterford Institute of Technology. Dr Montgomery continues to supervise post-graduate research and has been invited to present her research on New Psychoactive Substance toxicity at the Irish Society of Toxicology annual conference, 2017.

Dr Patrick Quinn

Dr Patrick Quinn is Principal Dental Surgeon for Co Kerry. His clinical career has focused predominantly on the area of special care dentistry. He has degrees in Dentistry and Law and a Masters Degree in Dental Public Health from University College Cork.

He is currently undertaking a Masters Degree in Law, specialising in Healthcare Ethics and Law at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, University of Manchester. He is a former President of the Public Dental Surgeons Group of the Irish Dental Association and the Irish Society of Dentistry for Children. He is the current President of the Irish Society for Disability and Oral Health.  He has a particular interest in public health law and ethics.

Dr Lina Zgaga

Dr Lina Zgaga is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Director of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning in the School of Medicine. Lina joined TCD from the University of Edinburgh in 2013. She graduated Medicine in 2005 (University of Zagreb), and obtained an MSc in the area of genomics (University of Edinburgh) and subsequently a PhD in Epidemiology (University of Zagreb). Her research focuses on public health, gene-environment interactions, and new epidemiological methods and frameworks for determining causal associations. She is a proliferative researcher with over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles cited over 16,000 times. She has been elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 2021.

Mr Mike Broderick

Mr Broderick has a strong background in the life and physical sciences predominantly Ecotoxicology. He works within a highly regulated sector for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine which is the Irish Competent Authority with responsibility for the authorisation and control of plant protection products and biocides. He has a proven track record in the evaluation of ecotoxicological/environmental data and in hazard identification and risk assessment. He currently represents Ireland at European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and European Chemical Agency (ECHA) expert meetings and contributes to EFSA and ECHA national and European regulatory dossiers and policies.