Speakers - CAVI

Aoife qualified in veterinary medicine from UCD in 2009, worked in mixed practice across Northern Ireland and the midlands and completed dairy herd health and public health certificate prior to joining the Department of Agriculture in 2018 as a veterinary research officer.

Brendan qualified from Dublin Vet College in 1997 before heading to rural Wales, then New Zealand and Australia, and returning to Ireland. Family circumstances eventually brought him back to Wales in October 2002 and he has been with Fenton vets in Haverfordwest ever since. Alongside his day job, Brendan is Director of QA for Iechyd Da, the Veterinary Delivery Partner in South Wales. He is the lead vet for the Wales Enferplex Pilot and is also involved with bTB data analysis using "RiskRate".

Brendan is a founding member of the Pembrokeshire TB Project.

Charles graduated as a vet from Glasgow University over 40 years ago. He worked in mixed rural practices in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and finally came home to run his own practice in Dungarvan, Co Waterford in 1998. After 25 years in practice, he joined Zoetis in 2010 and offered technical support to the sales team, veterinary practitioners and farmers in Munster and Leinster. His areas of interest include calf health and welfare, cattle shed design, mastitis control and milk quality and herd health, including integrating vaccination and worm control programmes into Irish farm systems. He took early retirement from Zoetis in August 2024 and is now a co-host on The Vet Pod podcast and offers a consultancy service to vets and farmers.  He is a member of 3 Technical Working Groups for Animal Health Ireland; CalfCare, Parasite Control and IBR Free.

Conor graduated from UCD veterinary college in 1999. From a farm in Fohenagh, Conor returned home in 2000 and purchased Joe Connolly’s veterinary practice. Since that time, he developed practice and amalgamated with Gerry Neary in 2012.

He runs FarmGate Veterinary Group with a dedicated team of six farm animal and equine vets supported by six administration and accounts staff. Special areas of interest include fertility, herd and flock health and providing practical solutions to problems on farms. He graduated with a post grad certificate in dairy herd health from UCD in 2016. Conor also farms a beef suckler and sheep farm and breeds horses for eventing. Interests outside the practice include hurling and veterinary politics.

Dr Damien Barrett is head of the Ruminant Animal Health Policy which he has responsibility for the regulated ruminant diseases, most notably the TB eradication programme. His brief also includes the policy for the eradication of BVD, IBR and Johnes disease and the small ruminant health programme.  He has been involved in the BVD eradication programme since its inception. 

Prior to his current role, he was responsible for animal health surveillance and TSE policy, having spent several years before that working in the Sligo Regional Veterinary Laboratory. He qualified from UCD in 1996 and has a number of post graduate qualifications and is a Diplomate of the European College of Bovine Herd Health Management. He was awarded a PhD on the epidemiology of Schmallemberg virus in Ireland in 2020. He is an adjunct associate professor in the school of Veterinary Medicine in UCD.   He is a past chairman of the CAVI conference and was a committee member for several years.

Donal graduated from UCD veterinary college in 2000, and began working in the Offaly locality soon afterwards. He established his own veterinary practice in 2004, and has since built up a large client base in the area. 

Donal has a particular interest in bull fertility testing. Outside if work, Donal farms his own small suckler and sheep herd.

A 2001 UCD, Dublin graduate, Eoin worked initially in mixed, mainly farm animal practice for Dundrum Veterinary Clinic in Limerick and Tipperary, Republic of Ireland. In September 2002, he took up employment as an intern in Large Animal Clinical Studies in UCD followed by three years as Large Animal Clinical Scholar.

He returned to farm animal practice in February 2007 with Mulcair Veterinary Clinic in Tipperary and Limerick and worked there for four years. In September 2010, he took up the position of Resident in Bovine Health Management in UCD. In 2012 he was appointed Lecturer in Integrated Farm Animal Health in UCD and was conferred with a master's in veterinary medicine (MVM) following research carried out into Leptospirosis in the Irish suckler cattle population. Following the successful completion of the certifying examination of the European College of Bovine Health Management (ECBHM), he qualified in July 2013 as a European specialist in bovine health management and currently works in UCD Dublin as Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Farm Animal Clinical Studies. He is Head of Subject for Farm Animal Clinical Studies in UCD, and his interests include mastitis, bovine surgery, internal medicine, herd health and clinical pharmacology.

John Gilmore is a 1997 graduate of UCD Veterinary School. After qualifying he worked in dairy practice in Listowel, Co.Kerry before returning to Co. Roscommon to work in large animal and equine practice as partner at Emlagh Lodge Veterinary.

In 2012, he established FarmLab Diagnostics, an ISO17025 accredited veterinary clinical laboratory offering animal health testing services, including infectious disease diagnosis and trace element analysis for food animals and equines.  John has a keen interest in management of large animal health at herd level including mastitis control and the optimisation of herd nutrition.

He sits on several technical committees at Animal Health Ireland and holds an MSc in Risk Management. John is currently investigating the “Significance of Anaplasma phagocytophilum and other tick related disease in Irish sheep” as part of a PhD programme at UCD.

Deputy President Veterinary Council of Ireland

Kevin qualified from the UCD School of Veterinary Medicine in 1991. He has worked in mixed practise in Kilkenny, Offaly and Kildare and is an active member of Veterinary Ireland.

He was first elected to the Veterinary Council in 2018. During his time on the Council, he has chaired the Legislation, Ethics and Monitoring Committee and currently the Practise Premises Committee.

He has also served on the Preliminary Investigations Committee and Fitness to Practise Committee.

Kevin is currently Deputy President of the Veterinary Council and was Chair of the Workforce Review Working Group, the Council published the Veterinary Council of Ireland Workforce Report in May 2025.

Lisa is a physiotherapy graduate from Trinity College Dublin in 2008 and a veterinary medicine graduate from UCD in 2013. She worked predominately in mixed animal practice in the UK, New Zealand and Ireland before joining the Department of Agriculture in 2022 based in Kilkenny Regional Veterinary Laboratory. She has a keen interest in descriptive and analytical epidemiology which led to completion of a masters in Epidemiology in 2023.

Lorcan graduated from veterinary medicine in UCD in 2004. After a short time in mixed practice, he then worked as small animal general practitioner in the UK for several years. In 2017, he undertook a PhD project investigating antimicrobial use and resistance in animal production (AMURAP). The project was a collaboration between the School of Veterinary Medicine at UCD and Teagasc and Lorcan’s work was focussed on pig farming. After completion of the project and graduation in 2022, he continued his work on antimicrobial resistance in farming as a postdoctoral researcher in the pig development department in Teagasc before joining the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) in early 2024.

Lorcan works as a veterinary research officer in the Bacteriology and Parasitology division at the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory, primarily within the National Reference Laboratory for bovine tuberculosis (NRL bTB). While his role is mainly concerned with bovine tuberculosis, it also encompasses Johnes Disease, Brucella and parasitology. The NRL bTB tests up to 8000 bovine sample tissue samples and as many as 2000 samples from other species each year. This work supports the national TB eradication programme in terms of surveillance at slaughter and diagnostic support for veterinary colleagues in the field.

Lorcan is particularly interested in the applications of whole genome sequencing and how this can help in improve our wider understanding of the epidemiology of bTB and its help in investigations at farm level.

Maresa is currently working in Kilkenny Regional Veterinary Laboratory as a Senior Research Officer. After qualifying as a Veterinary Surgeon in 1997 from UCD, she worked for eight years in large animal practice. She started working in Eyrecourt, Co. Galway with primarily sucklers/beef and sheep and smaller numbers of dairy herds. A move to large animal practice in Thurles, Co. Tipperary meant an increased emphasis on dairy work. She completed her research masters in veterinary medicine, with her thesis entitled, Clinicopathological Investigation of Infectious Respiratory Disease of Sheep in Ireland in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Parasitology, University College Dublin. Since joining the Veterinary Laboratory Service, she has provided a postmortem service to vets and their clients and has carried out collaborative research with Teagasc, UCD, local PVPs, HSE, DAFM colleagues in other regional veterinary laboratories and AHI. Projects included anthelmintic resistance in sheep and first season dairy calves, the prevalence of Haemonchus contortus in sheep, seroconversion to liver fluke in slaughtered lambs, sheep and dairy calf mortality studies, udder health in cull cows, zoonosis and hypocalcaemia. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists.

Hailing from a suckler farm in Tipperary, Marie – Louise grew up breeding and showing pedigree Charolais cattle.

Marie – Louise first completed a degree in Economics and Finance before returning to UCD to study Veterinary Medicine, graduating in 2015. After graduating from veterinary, she went on to work in Finbar Kiernan’s in Cavan, where she also attained her graduate certificate in Dairy Herd health. After more than 4 years in Cavan, Marie – Louise returned home to Munster, joining Mulcair Vets in Limerick and Tipperary. She enjoys all aspects of cattle practice, but special interests include herd health, milk quality, surgery and bovine fertility work.

Marie – Louise was the winner of Dairy Vet of the year 2024. Outside of veterinary, she is a keen rugby player, enjoys hiking and showing cattle with her family.

Michael Williams is a Dairy Farmer from North Pembrokeshire milking 150 cows in an automated robotic system. The farm utilises technology to enhance animal health and has adopted regenerative farming practices.

He began dairy farming after graduating from Cardiff University with a Masters of Earth Sciences. Passionate about farm sustainability and animals' well-being he is a member of the Pembrokeshire Project delivery board. Notable achievements are awards for animal health and welfare, Welsh Grassland Society awards and Pembrokeshire Agricultural Society Dairy Farmer of the year 2025.

When not farming he likes to spend his time mountaineering.

Rhiannon qualified from the Royal Veterinary College in 2007 and moved back to work in the family practice in Pembrokeshire. Her main work interests are infectious diseases and all things herd and flock health. She is a member of the Pembrokeshire project delivery team.

Roger Lewis is a dairy farmer in South Pembrokeshire, milking 400 pedigree Holstein Friesians. He is Chair of NFU Cymru TB Focus group and is also a member of the GB Calf Strategy bTB group. He sits on the Defra bTB Cattle Vaccination group.

Roger is also a member of the Wales TB Programme board and a founding member of the Pembrokeshire TB Project.

Ronan got his Ballsbridge MVB in 1994 and immediately went into mixed practice in the Irish midlands. After five seasons of attending very similar infectious problems on very similar farms, he recognized that to make a more durable impact in farm animal health, a different tactic was needed. In particular, recurrent seasons of “pneumonia” among dairy calves on a small family farm down a long lane in Co. Westmeath proved a memorable driver. So, he moved to Glasgow Veterinary School and did first a Pathology residency followed by a research PhD on the genetic control of vaccines in beef cattle. In late 2000, he joined DAFM as a research officer in Abbotstown just in time for the 2001 Foot-and-Mouth outbreak when he was seconded to the Pirbright Reference laboratory.

In 2017, Ronan became Head of Virology Division in Backweston. Now a department silverback, Ronan retains a special interest in the viruses behind bovine respiratory disease, how arboviruses will change the Irish farming game, laboratory biosecurity, and has an independent outlook on how animal health data is capitalised within Ireland.

Ronan currently sits on several national and EU groups concerned with One Health, Biosecurity, Outbreak vaccination and Emergency response planning.

Seamus Fagan graduated from UCD Vet College in 1992. He worked for 14 years in Roscommon in predominantly large animal practice – sheep and sucklers predominantly. He joined DAFM Veterinary Public Health in 2006, based in Kildare Chilling Company and moved to Athlone Regional Veterinary Laboratory in 2013.