Leadership

In the first of a regular series, UCD’s Prof Niamh Brennan explains what the term corporate governance means. The word governance comes from a Latin word – gubernare – which means to steer. Cicero wrote, “he that governs sits quietly at the stern and scarce is seen to stir.” Thus my colleague, Dr. Collette Kirwan, has conceptualized the board as being the navigator of the company. In his The Wealth of Nations of 1776, Adam Smith noted that directors of companies are managers of other people’s rather than their own money. He pointed to the risk that they wouldn’t watch over other people’s money with the same anxious vigilance as…

National Health Innovation Hub to Support New Companies A national health innovation hub with the potential to support hundreds of new companies will be established in 2014, the Government has announced in publishing the 10th Action Plan for Jobs Quarterly Progress Report. Access to the Health System for Irish Healthcare Innovators It said the new National Health Innovation Hub would be “a win-win for businesses, the health system – and most importantly, for job creation.” In essence, it means that innovative Irish healthcare companies will, for the first time, be able to quickly gain access to the health system to test their products and services, increasing the chances of developing…

Ulster Bank completes ‘One Week in June’ fundraiserKevin Keegan, head of HR at Ulster Bank with Tony Keville and Tomasz Kolodziejskui, marking the close of the bank’s One Week in June campaign Ulster Bank teamed up with eight charities across the Republic of Ireland for an initiative called ‘One Week in June’ to raise funds. Activities ranged from bake-offs to hill walking, relay runs to band battles and Ulster Bank staff all over Ireland got involved. The charities to benefit in the Republic of Ireland were: Barnardos; Concern Worldwide; the Irish Cancer Society; the Irish Heart Foundation; the Irish Hospice Foundation; Rehab; the Simon Communities; and the Society of St…

London City Airport has been awarded the Best Airport in Europe in the 1-5 million passenger category for the third year in a row by Airports Council International (ACI), a worldwide association of airport operators. It received the award in Frankfurt, Germany at the 10th annual ACI Europe Best Airport Awards for its “eagerness to innovate together with its quality of services, active sustainability and active agendas, such as airport tours for young people”. Declan Collier, CEO of London City Airport and former Dublin Airport Authority CEO said the judges recognised a number of areas where it had excelled in reaching and engaging with customers, the local community and employees.…

Amber, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded materials science centre based at Trinity College Dublin, has launched a new summer training course in nanoscience and materials science for primary school teachers. The course, which runs from 7– 11 July, is Department of Education-accredited and will take place in Amber in association with the School of Education, Trinity. It is created to help primary school teachers to teach nano and materials science to fifth and sixth class students and will focus on a number of key areas including nature of science and science teaching pedagogy; developing creative science investigation in the primary classroom; and enquiry-based approaches to science teaching in primary…

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has announced that Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Library will receive funding to conserve, research and digitize four early Irish manuscripts through the company’s 2014 global Art Conservation Project. Since 2010, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has provided grants to museums in 27 countries supporting 71 conservation projects. Once conserved the manuscripts will be made available via TCD Library’s digital collections and exhibited alongside the Book of Kells, the Book of Durrow and the Book of Armagh at TCD Library. The grant will fund the treatment, technical examination, digitization and art historical study of four of TCD Library’s most important early medieval Irish manuscripts, the Codex Usserianius Primus, the Garland of…

Research examining the formation of Irish water; the use of imagery in annual reports and the determinants of SME growth in Ireland are among the inaugural projects to be funded by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland (CPA) Ireland Research Fund.  The CPA Ireland Research Fund was established by the CPA to support scholarly and creative research in the area of accountancy and finance. Researchers from Queens University Belfast, Dublin City University, the University of Limerick and Cork Institute of Technology will each receive funding of up to €2,500 to progress their research. “There are many challenges facing researchers in attracting funding in the area of finance and…

Ireland is set to become the first country in the European Union to introduce legislation on plain packaging for tobacco products. The Government has approved the publication of the Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Bill 2014 and the presentation of the Bill in the Seanad. “Ireland will be the first country in the European Union to introduce such legislation and the third country worldwide,” said  Minister for Health James Reilly. “Australia introduced plain packaging legislation in November 2011 and the New Zealand Bill had its first reading in Parliament on 11 February this year. I understand that other EU countries are also considering such legislation. “This represents a significant…

A team of secondary school students from Limerick City have won third place at a European Space Agency competition in Norway. The Crescent College Comprehensive team joined students from 14 countries across Europe in the competition to build a CanSat – a simulation of a real satellite integrated within the volume of a soft drinks can – which was then launched by rocket to a height of 1km. The test for teams was to include all the major subsystems found in a satellite, such as power, sensors and a communication system. At launch stage this week, the primary mission was to measure temperature and air pressure and transmit the data…

Outgoing CEO of Bord Iascaigh Mhara Jason Whooley is to head up Bio-marine Ingredients Ireland (BII) in Killybegs, Co Donegal from next September. BII is a €35m project which will result in the creation of up to 50 jobs during the construction phase and a further 70 direct and indirect jobs when it intends to go into full production in 2016. It was formed as a result of a joint venture between the Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation and Norwegian pharmaceutical and marine biotech experts Biomarine Science Technology. “We intend BII to position Ireland as a global leader in marine ingredients,” said BII chairman Martin Howley. “With somebody of the vision and…