Faculty & Guest Speakers

Andy Pollak is Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, with offices in Armagh and Dublin, and Secretary of the all-island universities network, Universities Ireland. He is a former Belfast reporter, assistant news editor, religious affairs correspondent and education correspondent with The Irish Times, and co-author of a biography of Rev Ian Paisley. The Centre for Cross Border Studies researches and develops cooperation across the Irish border in education, health, ICT, the economy and other areas. It manages North-South higher education, teacher education and spatial planning networks, trains public servants in cross-border cooperation, and provides practical cross-border information through conferences, workshops and websites (www.crossborder.ie and www.borderpeople.info). Andy is a board member of the ICLRD.

Dave Walsh is Principal Officer in the Irish Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Governments Spatial Policy Unit, whose main area of responsibility is implementation of the National Spatial Strategy (NSS). Published in November 2002, the NSS is a 20 year planning framework for spatial development in the Republic of Ireland, and aims to achieve a better balance of social, economic and physical development across the country. The Unit also supports a policy framework for the planning system which seeks to achieve good spatial planning through strategic regional planning; clearly focused development planning at city, county and town level; better local area planning; retail planning; rural housing; and residential densities towards sustainable communities.

Greg Lloyd is Professor of Urban Planning and Head of the School of the Built Environment at the University of Ulster. Having started his career at the University of Aberdeen, he subsequently became Professor and Head of the School of Town and Country Planning, University of Dundee. Before moving to UU, he was Professor of Planning in the Department of Civic Design, University of Liverpool. Professor Lloyd’s research and publication interests include the relations between public policy, planning and real property developments; institutional innovation in spatial planning practices; and the efficiency and effectiveness of new planning and regulatory arrangements. He is a member of the Scottish Government’s National Planning Framework Advisory Group and patron of Planning Aid Scotland; and was Independent Ministerial Advisor to the Northern Ireland Assembly on the reform of land use planning.

Brendan Bartley was Deputy Director of NIRSA and led its research strand on Balanced Regional and Rural Development for the Irish Social Science Platform (ISSP), an all-island platform of integrated social science research and graduate training focusing on the social, cultural and economic transformations shaping Ireland in the 21st century. Together with Dr Delphine Ancien at NIRSA, Brendan developed NUI Maynooth’s structured Masters and PhD programmes in Social Science for the ISSP’s Graduate Research and Education Programme (GREP). He was also the University’s Programme Director for the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD). Over the past fifteen years, Brendan was directly involved in a number of European collaborative urban research networks in the connected areas of spatial planning, governance and urban regeneration. He has also been the Irish Contact Point for the European Spatial Planning Observatory Network (ESPON) which carries out comparative and applied research on territorial development and spatial planning in support of policy development at EU, national and regional scales.

John Bradley was formerly a research professor at the Dublin-based Economic and Social Research Institute and is a now an international research consultant in the areas of EU Structural Fund design and evaluation. During the 1980s he advised the Irish government on medium-term economic and industrial strategy. He now focuses mainly on development barriers facing the post-Communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe (and the impact on them of Structural Funds), and regularly acts as a consultant to government ministries in many of these countries.

Padraic White, former managing director of IDA Ireland, is chairing the Louth Economic Forum. Since leaving the IDA, Padraic has advised Governments around the world on the promotion of foreign direct investment as a senior consultant for FIAS (the Foreign Investment Advisory Service, part of the World Bank) and the Phare programme for new EU member states. He was the first chairman of the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) from 2002-2007, during which time the agency was responsible for the successful launch and operation of the LUAS light rail service in Dublin.

Feargal McCormack is Managing Partner of award winning FPM Accountants LLP, which he established in Newry in 1991. He recently served on the Independent Review Panel on the Location of Public Sector Jobs in Northern Ireland. He is the Chairman of the International Centre for Local and Regional Development. He is aformer Chairman of the Ulster Society of Chartered Accountants and he is an executive Member of the Newry Chamber of Commerce and Trade.

Aidan Gough is responsible for developing the strategic direction of InterTradeIreland as it seeks to deliver its legislative mandate. He is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast with an MBA and MSc in Economics. Prior to joining InterTradeIreland, Aidan was Director of the Northern Ireland Economic Council. He has chaired two steering committees overseeing ICLRD applied research studies: Spatial Strategies on the Island of Ireland: Development of a Framework for Collaborative Action (2006) and the Newry-Dundalk Twin City Region: Supporting the implementation of Cross-border Collaborative Frameworks (2009).

Niall Cussen is a Senior Planning Adviser with the Spatial Planning Section in the Heritage and Planning Division of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Since 2000 he has been a key member of the team that prepared the National Spatial Strategy. Since the Government’s adoption and launch of the strategy in November 2002, he has been closely involved in its implementation through interactions with government departments and agencies as well as regional and local authorities. A former president of the Irish Planning Institute, Niall has worked as a planner for almost 20 years in a broad range of urban and rural contexts in both forward planning and development management at both local and national level. He served on the Steering Committees for the ICLRD/InterTradeIreland Spatial Strategies on the Island of Ireland 2006 report and the 2009 Newry-Dundalk Twin City Region and together with his colleague David Walsh, has been instrumental in promoting collaborative approaches between the National Spatial Strategy (RoI) and the Regional Development Strategy (NI).

Dr Conor Patterson is the Chief Executive of Newry & Mourne Co-operative & Enterprise Agency and President of the Newry Chamber of Commerce. Conor has been actively involved in the economic regeneration of the Newry and Mourne region since the mid-1990’s. Starting in Between 1997 and 2003 he was the Chairman of the Newry and Mourne Economic Forum and more recently he has been one of the co-ordinators of the Greater Newry Vision Partnership. From 2003-2005 he was the Chairman of Enterprise Northern Ireland, the federation of Local Enterprise Agencies in Northern Ireland. He is currently Vice President of Newry Chamber of Commerce and Trade and a Governor of the Southern Regional College. Conor has a Doctorate in Business & Economics from Kingston University in London. He is an MSc Economics graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a Chartered Urban and Regional Planner. Conor is accredited as a Mediator by the Mediation Network for Northern Ireland.  He is a Member of the Institute of Business Consulting and a Member of the Institute of Economic Development.

Justin Gleeson is the Project Manager of the All-Island Research Observatory (AIRO) based in the National University of Ireland Maynooth. He is also heavily involved in a number of other projects with the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA), the National Centre for GeoComputation and the ICLRD, including the published Atlas of Ireland –Mapping Social and Economic Change and a pilot project to develop a baseline of service infrastructure accessibility in both Irish jurisdictions. Justin has over six years experience working within the commercial and research GIS industry in the UK and Ireland.

• John Driscoll, Director, ICLRD 
• Dr. Neale Blair, Assistant Director, ICLRD
• Kevin Lyons, Sectoral Officer, North/South Ministerial Council
• Jim Hetherington,Principal Planning Officer, Regional Planning and Transport