Reappointments to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland - 14 August 2024

The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has reappointed the following members to the Board of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

M.Sc Mgmt, FCIPD is a successful strategic HRM leader with over 30 years Management Executive / C-Suite experience - which was gained in both the public and private sectors. He also has many years of experience as a Board member and is currently an independent non-executive member of the Boards of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the Irish Aviation Authority.

Currently working selectively as a strategic HRM and Transformation Management Consultant, Pat was An Post Group HR Director / Chief People Officer from 2004 – 2019, prior to that he was General Manager HR with Waterford Crystal (1986 – 2004) and prior to that he was a Personnel Officer with Bord na Mona.

Pat has a proven track record of business transformation including developing, negotiating, and implementing strategic, operational, cultural and organisational change, establishing and maintaining high standards of corporate governance – including ethical behaviour at senior management level in particular, sourcing top talent, building leadership capability at all levels of management, and successful employee engagement and stakeholder relationship management.

Mr Knight is reappointed with effect from 2 June 2024 until to 1 June 2029.

Professor Francis Butler is a Professor in the UCD Centre for Food Safety. He is Head of Subject in Biosystems Engineering at UCD. His main research is in food safety with a particular focus on traceability systems and quantitative risk assessment of microbiological and chemical hazards in foods.

Professor Butler coordinates the UCD MSc in Food Safety and Risk Analysis. He has led several large scale quantitative microbial food risk assessments and has made some novel contributions in the characterisation of microbial distributions in food and developing novel sampling strategies for contaminants in foods. He is currently leading projects using molecular microbiological techniques to identify the sources and routes of transmission of pathogens through the food chain.

Other research interests include food chain integrity and the traceability of foods.

Professor Butler has published over 150 publications in refereed journals, with over 100 refereed papers in international conference proceedings and over 150 additional national conference and other workshop presentations. He has coordinated or partnered in over 30 research projects including four EU Framework projects.

He has trained a substantial team of researchers and scholars, including 20 PhD students to completion and 13 research Masters students, as well as 14 post-doctoral researchers.

He has served on several FAO/WHO expert meetings on Microbiological Risk Assessment. Prior to joining UCD, Professor Butler worked in production management in the Irish dairy industry.

Mr Butler is reappointed with effect from 21 May 2024 until 20 May 2027.