Guest Speaker:  John Fitzgerald FCCA

John Fitzgerald was appointed Dublin City Manager in 1996 and stepped down from that position in 2006 on completion of a ten- year contract.

He qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant while working in industry and moved to Cork as Finance Manager with Cork City Council in 1980.

He subsequently became Dublin City Treasurer and was appointed Dublin Assistant City and County Manager immediately prior to reorganisation of Local Government in Dublin in 1991. He was one of the three Managers appointed to set up the three new Dublin Counties – Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown - and became the first County Manager of South Dublin County Council.

In 2006, he was appointed chairman of the newly formed Grangegorman Development Agency which was established by Government to provide a campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology and it’s 20,000 students together with health facilities in Dublin’s north inner city.

He was Vice Chair of Intertrade Ireland, one of the all island bodies set up by the two governments as part of the peace process, to promote economic development across the island.

He was appointed Chairman of the Regeneration Agencies set up in Limerick resulting from the recommendations of his report to Government on problems of social exclusion in that city and was a member of the Mid West Task Force established to review potential for job creation in the region.

He was chairman of the Change Management Task Force that was set up to report on implementation of the Government decision to separate Shannon Airport from The Dublin Airport Authority and merge it with Shannon Development as a commercial state body.

 He was appointed Chairman of An Post in 2008 and Chairman of the National Transport Authority in 2010.

He is involved with a number of private and voluntary organisations.