Governance & Oversight

Group Clinical Director, SUHG

Professor Pat Nash was appointed Chief Clinical Director of Saolta University Health Care Group in December 2012. In this role, he is responsible for Clinical Governance for the Hospital Group and he is also the lead for Quality and Patient Safety across the Group.

Pat is from Newcastle West, County Limerick and is a graduate of UCC. He did his training in Cardiology in Cork and Dublin before moving to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio where he completed subspecialty fellowships in Cardiac Imaging and Heart Failure.

In 2004, he returned to Ireland to take up the post of Consultant Cardiologist in University Hospital Galway. From 2008 to 2012 he was Clinical Director for Medicine at the Hospital.

External Clinical Trials Expert

Prof. Joe Eustace is the Director of the HRB Clinical Research Facility at UCC (CRF-C), Chairman of the HRB CRCI Senior Management Team and Professor of Patient Focused Research at UCC. The CRF-C facility is co-funded by the University and by the Health Research Board and supports the design, conduct and analysis of Patient Focused Research throughout UCC and its affiliated Medical Centres. He is also a Consultant Renal Physician at Cork University Hospital.

He graduated MB, BAO BCh (UCD) 1990 and undertook postgraduate training in General Internal Medicine and Nephrology in Dublin (1990-1996), Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore (1996-1999), and a NIH funded Fellowship in Clinical Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, (1997-1999), as part of which he completed a MHS (Clin Epi). He served as an Assistant Professor in the Johns Hopkins Faculty of Internal Medicine and in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology. His research has been funded by the NIH (NIDDK), NKF, the HRB and EI is focused on the methodological issues in Clinical Trial design, nutritional management of Chronic Kidney Disease and investigations into bone and vascular health in renal transplant recipients. He has authored or co-authored over 80 peer reviewed papers and is a co-applicant on the HRB Trials Methodology Research Network.

Legal Representative

Dariona read Law at Trinity College Dublin and trained as a Solicitor with A & L Goodbody. She qualified in 1994. She worked as a Litigation Solicitor with V.P. McMullin specialising in Health Care Law until 2004. She was appointed to the Board of the Residential Institutions Redress Board in 2004 where she continues to work. She has chaired Mental Health Tribunals since 2010. She worked as a Consultant for CS Kelly & Co. from 2016 to 2018. Dariona was appointed to the Board of the Saolta University Health Care Group in 2017 as a Non-Executive Director. She chairs the Saolta Board Quality and Patient Safety Committee.

Vice-President for Research & Innovation, NUI Galway

Professor Jim Livesey joined University of Galway as Vice President for Research and Innovation in February 2021.
Professor Livesey joins NUI Galway from the University of Dundee, where he has been Dean of Humanities since 2014. Originally from Cork and a graduate of UCC, Professor Livesey did a BA in History and Philosophy and an MA in History. He undertook his PhD at Harvard, where he was later a visiting professor, and also held positions at Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Sussex.

Professor Livesey continues to research in the fields of Global and Revolutionary history and has a monograph entitled, Provincializing Global History, out from Yale University Press this year. This follows on two highly regarded monographs from Harvard and Yale university presses.

Chief Operations Officer, SUHG

Ann Cosgrove is Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the Saolta University Health Care Group which is comprised of 7 hospital sites across the west and northwest of Ireland. The Group employs over 10,000 staff, has a budget of €930m and provides acute hospital care to over 730,000 people across one third of the country. In her role as COO, Ann is responsible for overseeing the operational delivery of services across the Saolta Group.  She is executive lead for delivery and governance structures relating to Scheduled Care, Estates, ICT and Infection Prevention and Control and major emergency planning in collaboration with regional and national teams.  Develops the annual service plan and the Saolta Group annual report and has a responsibility in relation to internal and external communications on behalf of the Group.

Ann has 25 years’ experience in health service management and has worked in both acute hospital and community roles. Prior to her appointment as COO of the Saolta Group in 2015, Ann was Hospital Manager at Galway University Hospitals, the level 4 tertiary hospital within the Saolta Group. She also held the position of Services Manager for GUH and was responsible for the delivery of a number of large and complex infrastructural projects.

Ann has a Bachelor of Business Studies and a Masters in Leadership in Health Care and also holds a Diploma in Leadership & Quality in Health Care RCPI and a National Diploma in Human Resource Management.

Following graduation from Trinity College Dublin with  BA in English Irish and Fine Arts, Phyllis opened her shop, Cobwebs in Galway. Three other shops followed.

Her work with UCHG, started when she piloted a scheme with the pediatric unit. followed by joining Saolta Arts for the promotion of the Arts within the hospital environment. 

 She was appointed to the Board of the Salota Group at the founding of the board in 2013. She served as a patient advocate to the board for nine years.

Prof Martin O’Donnell is Executive Dean of College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, taking-up the role in February 2022. He is Professor of Neurovascular Medicine at University of Galway, and Consultant Geriatrician at University Hospital Galway, Ireland. A medical graduate of University College Cork, he trained in Geriatric and Stroke medicine and completed a PhD with the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (McMaster University). He has considerable experience of international research collaborations and led a key study of risk factors for stroke (INTERSTROKE study) that included 26,000 individuals from 32 countries. Martin joined NUI Galway and Saolta University Healthcare Group in 2010, developed a successful MSc in Clinical Research. He has served as Director of HRB-Clinical Research Facility (until 2020) during a time of substantial growth in clinical trial research. Prof O’Donnell has a strong track-record of leadership, high-impact publications and securing major research funding awards, including a European Research Council award.