About the speakers

Below are biographies for the speakers at the 2011 Competition Authority conference.

Paul Gallagher

Paul Gallagher was the Attorney General of Ireland from June 2007 until March 2011. He is a Senior Counsel and has practised at the Irish Bar for 31 years. He is a Bencher of the King's Inns in Dublin and was formerly Vice Chairman of the Irish Bar Council. He was a nominee of Ireland to the Arbitration and Conciliation Panels of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and was Chairman of the Irish Sports Council Anti-Doping Disciplinary Tribunal. He served as an observer on the High-Level Advisory Group on the Future of EU Justice Policy (2007-08) representing the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Malta. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at University College Dublin and a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. He has degrees in Law, History and Economics.

Declan Purcell

Declan Purcell has been a Member of the Competition Authority since April 1998, and was appointed Chairperson in April 2010. He also directs the Authority's Strategy Division. He has worked in the public service since 1969, mainly in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (1976-1998). During that period he held a wide range of management positions; these included responsibility for policy development in relation to industry, consumer protection, national human resource development and company law. Before becoming Chairperson, Declan directed the Authority's Advocacy Division for several years. The Division advises the Government on competition policy issues, and advocates the removal of unnecessary or disproportionate restrictions on competition. The Division also seeks to raise awareness and understanding of the benefits of competition across the economy.

Vincent Power

Dr Vincent Power is a Partner in A & L Goodbody, specialising in EU law, EU and Irish competition/antitrust law and transport law. He is head of the firm's EU and Competition Group which is consistently ranked at the forefront of Irish law firms. Vincent has been involved in most of the leading competition, merger control, EU and State aid cases in Ireland for over 15 years, including the major takeovers, investigations, court cases and studies. He has been involved in over 400 merger filings in Ireland and the EU. He advises both national and multinational clients in sectors as diverse as aviation, banking, computers, drinks, food, insurance, IT, professional services and shipping. He is the author or editor of seven books including "Competition Law and Practice", "Irish Competition Law" and the award-winning "EC Shipping Law". He has a Masters Degree and a Doctorate from Cambridge University and was the first ever Law graduate to be awarded the Distinguished Alumnus award from University College Cork where he graduated with a BCL. He is Adjunct Professor of Law at University College Cork and Visiting Professor of EU Law at Dalhousie University in Canada.

John FitzGerald

John FitzGerald is a Research Professor with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and is responsible for research on macroeconomics, energy and environment and for the Insitute's Energy Policy Research Centre. He is the president of the Irish Economic Association and a member of the Irish Energy Research Council and of the High Level Group on Green Enterprise. John studied history and economics at University College Dublin where he took Masters degrees successively in History and in Economics. Since joining the ESRI he has published in a number of different fields and in a range of journals. He was a member of the National Economic and Social Council from 1999 to 2006 and was a member of the Northern Ireland Authority for Energy Regulation between 2003 and 2006. John chaired the Renewable Energy Strategy Group for the Department of Public Enterprise in 1999-2000. He was a member of the Independent Water Review Panel in Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2008. He was a member of EU "Group for Economic Analysis" from 2002-2004 advising the President of the EU Commission on matters of Economic Policy. From 2004-2008 he was president of the EUROFRAME group of European economic research institutes.

William E Kovacic

William E Kovacic has served on the United States Federal Trade Commission since January 2006, and served as Chairman from March 2008 until March 2009. He has also served, since January 2009, as Vice Chair for Outreach of the International Competition Network. Before he became a Commissioner, William was the FTC's General Counsel from 2001 to 2004, and also worked for the Commission from 1979 until 1983, initially in the Bureau of Competition's Planning Office and later as an attorney advisor to former Commissioner George W Douglas. William was the EK Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law at George Washington University Law School, where he began teaching in 1999. He had taught at the George Mason University School of Law since 1986, after practising antitrust and government contracts law for three years at Bryan Cave's Washington DC office. Earlier in his career, William spent one year on the majority staff of the US Senate Judiciary Committee's Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee. Beginning in 1992, William was an advisor on antitrust and consumer protection issues to the governments of Armenia, Benin, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Panama, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. He received a bachelor degree from Princeton University in 1974 and a law degree from Columbia University in 1978.

Don Thornhill

Dr Don Thornhill divides his time between board memberships and his consultancy and advisory work on strategy and policy to a number of leading Irish organisations. He chairs the National Competitiveness Council, the Irish Payments Services Organisation, Hibernia College, the Ageing Well Network and the INSPIRE interuniversity nanoscience consortium. He is also Deputy Chairperson of the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board and a member of the boards of Forfás, the Irish Hospice Foundation and of the recently established all-Ireland Institute for Hospice and Palliative Care. Don is former chair of the US/Ireland Fulbright Commission and a former board member of the Irish Management Institute, the Irish Taxation Institute, Science Foundation Ireland and of the Digital Hub Agency. He completed a seven year term as Executive Chairman of the Higher Education Authority (HEA) in January 2005. Prior to his appointment to the HEA he was Secretary General of the Department of Education and Science from 1993-1998. He also worked in the Revenue Commissioners, Departments of Foreign Affairs and Finance and in the Unilever group of companies. He is a graduate of University College Dublin (BSc and PhD (Chemistry)) and Trinity College Dublin (MSc (Econ)). He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the National University of Ireland in 2007. During 1987 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy and in 2006 he was awarded honorary life membership of the Royal Dublin Society for his services to Ireland.

Anna Colucci

Anna Colucci is currently head of Strategy and Delivery Unit in DG Competition. She joined DG Competition in February 2007 to work on strategic planning related issues. Her interest in competition policy however dates back to 2002 when she joined the State aid unit in DG Move (transport policy), and subsequently became the co-ordinator for competition files in the transport sector. From 1994 to 2002 she worked in the Aviation Directorate of DG Move. She was, amongst others, in charge of the European Aviation Safety Agency, implemenation of the third package of air transport liberalisation, consumer protection in general and air carrier liability in particular. Anna has a degree in Political Sciences from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Strasbourg, a masters in European Studies (political science) from the College of Europe of Bruges and a diploma in International Relations Studies from the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center.

John Fingleton

Dr John Fingleton holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Dublin and Oxford, and completed his doctorate at Nuffield College Oxford, where he studied under Sir James Mirrlees, the Nobel prize-winning economist. He worked as an academic economist at the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics, and at Trinity College Dublin, spending visiting periods at Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. In 2000, he was appointed full time Chairperson at the Irish Competition Authority, where he oversaw the implemenation of the 2002 Competition Act. In this position, he also sat on the National Competitiveness Council. In 2005, he was apopinted Chief Executive at the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the UK. In that role, he has overseen a range of consumer and competition enforcement activity including actions on bank overdraft charges and on price-fixing in various sectors; a variety of market studies including banking, house-building and pharmaceutical pricing; and market investigation references of airports, grocery retailing and payment protection insurance. John is Chair of the Steering Group of the International Competition Network and sits on the board of a number of academic journals.

Isolde Goggin

Isolde Goggin was appointed Member of the Competition Authority in August 2010 and is Director of the Advocacy Division and Monopolies Division. From 2004 to 2006, Isolde was Chairperson of Ireland’s Commission for Communications Regulation, and Commissioner from 2002 to 2004. Before joining ComReg, Isolde was Director of the Regulated Markets Division at the Competition Authority. She began her career in 1980 with Eircom (then Telecom Éireann) as an engineer, and later moved into business management and then regulation, working with Eircom, DG Information Society of the European Commission and Ericsson. Isolde holds a First Class Honours engineering degree, a Masters in Business Administration, and a Postgraduate Diploma in European Competition Law, and is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland. She is a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland.

The Competition Authority - www.tca.ie

About the speakers