Frank Barry is Professor of International Business and Economic Development at Trinity College Dublin. He has held positions at the Institute for International Economic Studies (Stockholm), the University of California, Harvard Institute for International Development and the University of New South Wales. He serves as a resource person with the African Economic Research Consortium. Among his specialist areas is foreign direct invesment in Ireland.

Dr Donal de Buitléir is Director of Publicpolicy.ie - an independent think tank funded by Atlantic Philanthropies. He is a Past President of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland and former Chairman of the Foundation for Fiscal Studies. He is currently Chairman of the National Advocacy Service for People with Disabilities and is an Eisenhower Fellow.

Thomas Conefrey is Chief Economist and Head of Secretariat at the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. Prior to joining IFAC in July 2014, Thomas worked in the Central Bank of Ireland for three and a half years and as a Research Assistant at the ESRI. He holds a B.A.  (Economics) from Trinity College and an M.A. (Economics) from NUI Maynooth. He completed his Ph.D in Economics at UCD.

David Duffy is Senior Research Officer at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Dublin, which he joined in 1996. He is the lead researcher on the Residential Property Research Programme and his published research covers topics such as measuring house price change, the affordability of homeownership, perceptions of inflation by consumers and the extent of negative equity in the Irish housing market. Prior to joining the ESRI he worked in London as a research analyst for a property company and in Dublin as an economic consultant, and as the in-house economist for the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland.

Ronan Gallagher is a Principal Officer at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. He is Head of the Department’s Central Expenditure and Evaluation Unit (CEEU) and Chair of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) Management Board. The IGEES is being developed as an integrated cross-Government service to enhance the role of economics and value for money analysis in public policy-making.

Simon Harris TD is the Minister of State at the Departments of Finance, Public Expenditure & Reform and Taoiseach with special responsibility for the OPW, Public Procurement, and International Banking (including IFSC). He was elected to Dáil Éireann in the last General Election. He is the youngest member of the current Dáil with the Irish Tatler Magazine naming him as one of Ireland’s ‘12 up and coming power players’. Simon works as a disability advocate and set up an Autism support and lobby group.

Tom Healy is Director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI). Tom has previously worked in the Economic and Social Research Institute, the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the National Economic and Social Forum and the Department of Education and Skills. He holds a PhD (economics and sociology) from UCD. His research interests have included the impact of education and social capital on well-being.

Dr David Haugh, a New Zealander, is senior economist on the Ireland/Spain desk in the Economics Department at the OECD, Paris. He has also worked on Estonia, Portugal and Mexico, in the macroeconomic policy division of the OECD, and at the New Zealand Treasury in macroeconomic forecasting and research. He completed a Ph.D. at the Australian National University.

Danny McCoy is Director General at Ibec, a post he assumed in July 2009. He joined Ibec as Director of Policy in 2005 and has been centrally involved in national economic and social policy debates. Prior to joining Ibec, he was a senior economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) where, from 2000 to 2005, he edited the Institute’s Quarterly Economic Commentary. He moved to the ESRI from the Central Bank where from 1996 to 2000 he had worked extensively on Irish entry into the EMU.

Simon McKeever is the Chief Executive of the Irish Exporters Association. He joined the IEA from the British Embassy in Dublin where he was at the forefront of joint trade strategy between UK and Ireland. He was the driving force behind the British Irish Chamber of Commerce. Simon spent 18 years working in global financial markets, with RBC and AIB Capital Markets and has done considerable business in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the UK, in a business development capacity.

Peter O'Neill is Managing Director, IBM Ireland. He was appointed to this position in May 2010. Prior to this, he was Director of IBM Sales and Distribution in Ireland. Having joined the company in 1981, during his IBM career he has held leadership positions in sales, finance and general management in both Europe and America. Prior to joining IBM he worked for five years in Diageo Ireland. He is a Board member of the American Chamber of Commerce and was President of the Chamber in 2012. He sits on the National Council of IBEC. He is also a Board Member of Oxfam Ireland. He has previously served as a Board Member of the Irish Research Council and of the Board of the Dublin City University Trust.

Don Thornhill chairs the National Competitiveness Council, the Board of Hibernia College, the Chartered Accountants’ Regulatory Board (CARB) and the Standing Committee of Dublin Maternity Hospitals. He is also a consultant and adviser on strategy and policy to a number of leading Irish organisations. He is a former top civil servant – Secretary General of the Department of Education and Science and Executive Chair of the Higher Education Authority. During his career in the public service he was centrally involved in many of the transformational policy developments in Ireland in education and research and, earlier in his career, in tax administration and economic policy.