Board of Directors

Chair of Green Foundation Ireland, Donna Mullen is a farmer, consultant ecologist, and director of Wildlife Surveys Ireland, with an award-winning farm, awards and placements which include the RDS Sustainable Enterprise Award, the EU Rural Inspiration Award, and the Ellison Award.

She works as an ecologist, drawing up nature trails and sustainability plans. Her work involves spending many happy hours surveying buildings for bats, and she helped draw up the guidelines on bat surveys for the Heritage Council (Traditional Farm Building Scheme). She is a founder member of both Bat Conservation Ireland and the Irish Environmental Network, and has also served on the board of the Irish Wildlife Trust.

Donna has a keen interest in environmental law and co-ordinates the campaign to have the environment protected under the Irish Constitution.

She lives on a farm nature reserve in County Meath with her husband, four children, and an assortment of animals.

John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics in Queen’s University Belfast. He has a BA and MA from University College Dublin and a PhD from the University of Glasgow. His areas of research include green political economy and green economics; economic practices and sustainability, normative aspects of sustainable development; governance for sustainable development; the greening of citizenship and civic republicanism; green politics in Ireland, North and South; the Transition Movement; the politics, ethics and economics of peak oil and climate change; the governance of science and innovation; the link between academic knowledge, political activism and policy making; trust, legitimacy and public policy; citizenship, public policy and governance; post-conflict politics and political economy in Northern Ireland and theories and practices of reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

John is a founding member of two think tanks, the Centre for Progressive Economics and Green House Think Tank, and is also a founding member of Holywood Transition Town and the ‘Holywood Buy Local’ campaign. He is a keen cyclist, indifferent cook, frequently absent from his family and a passionate believer in the ability of people to initiate social transformation.

Pat Brereton has written extensively on all aspects of environmental and Irish media. He has been Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Dublin City University for five years, before taking on the duties of Head of School of Communication and is currently co-director of Climate and Society Research Centre.

Pat has helped to roll out a carbon calculator for the Irish media through the ScreenGreening initiative. His most recent book Essential Concepts of Environmental Communications: An A-Z Guide (2022) has numerous audio-visual case studies to illustrate a wide range of environmental concepts. Other books include Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005); Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema with Roddy Flynn (2007); Smart Cinema, DVD Add-ons and New Audience Pleasures (2012); Environmental Ethics and Film in (2016) and Environmental Literacy and New Digital Audiences (2019).

Joan Campbell studied English at Trinity College Dublin. She then trained to qualify as a solicitor and practised as a solicitor until 1993. In 1994 she was admitted to practise as a barrister.

Joan has been active in the green movement since 2011.

Claire Downey is currently Policy and Research Director at the Rediscovery Centre, in Ballymun, Dublin. Prior to this, she was the National Network Co-Ordinator with Community Reuse Network Ireland (CRNI), an all-Ireland umbrella body funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that represents community based organisations involved in reuse and recycling. In this role she was responsible for the promotion of reuse, support for members to overcome barriers to reuse, communication and policy input, networking and research.

Claire holds a Bachelor of Engineering (first class honours) degree and has over twelve years of experience in the waste sector. She is deeply committed to waste prevention and reuse, demonstrated through work on co-ordinating Repair Café Ireland and as a board member (as company secretary) of Sonairte – The National Ecology Centre for over eight years. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Waste Management in Ireland and sits on the Centre Council for the Republic of Ireland Centre.

Eileen McDermott (BA Hons ECCE, European Masters in Early Childhood Education) is a teacher of Early Childhood Education studies.

She is a long term activist in the green movement with a particular interest in education issues.

Martin Nolan is a chartered accountant and a Financial Reporting Specialist, having previously been Head of the Department of Accountancy and Professional Studies at Technological University Dublin. He has extensive business experience which includes 15 years at management level in PwC and Deloitte. He is an experienced lecturer in Audit and Assurance and International Financial Reporting, and has co-authored a leading Irish textbook External Auditing and Assurance.

Martin has been involved in green issues since 1988. He is also involved on a voluntary basis with five registered Irish charities.

Former Chair of Green Foundation Ireland, Duncan Stewart (who is an award-winning architect and television producer) has been a leading Irish advocate for environmental issues for over 40 years. A champion for environmental issues, sustainable energy and architectural conservation since his student days, for the past two decades Duncan has also been a popular television personality in Ireland.

Duncan’s Eco Eye series was driven by his interests in the protection of Ireland’s environment and enhancement of biodiversity. It was Ireland’s longest running environmental series and one of the most popular shows on Irish television – there were twenty-one series in total and all available episodes can be viewed in the Eco Eye section of our Resources page.

A firm believer in the power of local community co-operatives, Duncan actively engages with the ‘Get Involved’ sustainable community initiative, which promotes local, voluntary, community-led projects nationwide. This ‘bottom up’ movement sets out to inspire and enable innovative local collaborative enterprises to flourish, which stimulate rewarding new livelihoods in sustainable energy, local food produce, biodiversity enhancement, water catchment protection and eco-tourism.

Duncan is also passionately concerned about Climate Change – in particular, the urgency to inform and engage Irish people in weaning off the use of fossil fuel for energy and other sources of greenhouse emissions and in switching to sustainable solutions.

On 21 June 2023 Duncan, along with Greta Thunberg, was awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City of Dublin, the highest honour that can be bestowed by Dublin City. You can view a video of the ceremony here.