Events and Activities

Fine Gael LGBT Spring Conference

We are delighted to invite you to the Fine Gael LGBT Spring Conference taking place on Saturday, April 27th at 2.30pm.

Location: Ashling Hotel, Dublin 8.

Speakers:

  • Mark Kelly, Director, Irish Council for Civil Liberties
  • Catherine Vaughan, Director of Quality and Risk Management, Ernst & Young
  • Pio Fenton, Chair, Samaritans Ireland
  • Colm O'Gorman, Director, Amnesty International, Ireland

We are looking forward to a wide-ranging discussion on the importance of equality in all aspects of life, from employment to law, from mental well-being to civil and human rights.

Speakers Profiles

Mark Kelly 

Mark Kelly is Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), a Commissioner Designate of the new Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) and Co-Chair of the International Network of Civil Liberties Organisations (INCLO). He is an international human rights lawyer, and founder of the independent consultancy firm Human Rights Consultants (HRC). Before founding HRC, he lived in Strasbourg for ten years, where he worked as Head of Unit in the Secretariat of the Council of Europe’s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). In that role, he supervised the CPT’s human rights monitoring and reporting activities in relation to more than a dozen Council of Europe member States, including Ireland.
 

Catherine Vaughan

Catherine Vaughan is a Director with Ernst & Young working in the Quality & Risk Management group.
She has long been involved in supporting and chairing the firm’s LGBT network, EYGLES. Throughout her career, she has had experience working with large multinational organisations as well as smaller family run businesses. Catherine’s experience stems from her qualification as a Chartered Accountant in 1999. Her current role cover a wide geography since her appointment to the Global network’s EMEIA Area in 2008. The role includes monitoring legislative and regulatory changes affecting the business and developing policies and procedures in response to those developments. She further works with the business to monitor service quality.

Following a move to Ireland shortly after qualifying, Catherine took up a role with Ernst & Young’s Financial Services Audit department. This was followed by a period of time with their Litigation Support Services group before a full time move in to her Risk Management role. More recently in her role, Catherine finds herself engaged on European Regulatory matters through both engagement with and monitoring of Regulators’ developments.  Catherine currently sits as a member of the Chartered Accountant’s Ethics Committee. She is committed to enabling the firm’s delivering of top quality service, in particular through her belief in developing high performance teams.

Pio Fenton

Pio Fenton is the National Chairperson of Samaritans in Ireland (NI and ROI) with operational responsibility for the delivery and development of the emotional support service throughout the island. This role, which is a volunteer position, involves leading the organisation and its 2000 volunteers in Ireland and follows on from his role as Director of Cork Samaritans. Pio currently works as a lecturer in Business at Waterford Institute of Technology where he is Programme Director for WIT's Postgraduate Diploma in Business in Lean Practice. Pio completed a PhD in Computer Science at Cork Institute of Technology in 2006. He has been a volunteer with Samaritans since 2004 and lives in Blackrock in Cork City with his partner.

Colm O'Gorman

Colm O’Gorman is Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland, a position he has held since February 2008. He is the founder and former Director of One in Four, the national NGO that supports women and men who have experienced sexual violence. He has also served as a member of Seanad Eireann, is the author of the best selling memoir 'Beyond Belief' and a regular media commentator and contributor.