RIAI/DHLGH National Housing Conference 2022 “Future Settlement: Living Cities & Towns”, 28 & 29 March

Darragh O'Brien TD

Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage

Darragh O'Brien TD was appointed Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in June 2020. He is an elected TD for the constituency of Dublin-Fingal. Prior to his election to the 30th Dáil in 2007, Minister O’Brien worked mainly in Financial Services and was elected to Fingal County Council in 2004. He was elected to Seanad Éireann in 2011.

He has held various positions within the Oireachtas including Vice-Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee, Member of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Law Reform, Leader of Fianna Fáil in the Seanad and Opposition Frontbench Spokesperson on Dublin, Foreign Affairs and Housing.

Charlotte Sheridan MRIAI

RIAI President 2022-2023

Charlotte Sheridan is a Registered Architect and town planner with over 20 years’ professional experience as a director of Sheridan Woods, an architecture and urban planning practice. A passionate advocate for quality-led plans for towns, villages and urban neighbourhoods, Charlotte has specialised in urban regeneration, housing, sustainable communities and collaborative planning in towns and cities in Ireland, with past experience in London and Berlin.

Charlotte Sheridan was elected to the RIAI Council in 2018 and appointed Honorary Secretary for 2019-2020. She is a Non-Executive Director and Board Member of the RIAI since 2019 and a member of the Joint RIAI / DHLGH Housing Committee since 2018. She represents the RIAI on the Fingal Heritage Forum since 2020. She is also a member of the Irish Planning Institute (IPI) and its Urban Design Committee. Charlotte is a Board Member of NAMA since 2020.

Áine Stapleton

Assistant Secretary

Áine is Head of Social Housing Delivery in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Áine joined the Department in December 2020. She is a career civil servant having previously served in senior management roles in the Department of Finance, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport.

Dearbhla Lawson MIPI, MRTPI

Head of Strategic Planning at the Land Development Agency (LDA)

Dearbhla is an experienced strategic planner working to build a stable pipeline of housing land supply and optimising relevant lands to deliver compact, affordable and sustainable development. Dearbhla has previously worked as Director of Services in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council, and Head of Transport & Strategic Planning in Cambridge.

David Birkbeck

Director of the Housing Design Awards

David Birkbeck studied law but became a journalist. Reading the small print (and knowing which words have power) helped him produce design guidance later supported by governments. The success of Building for Life (now Building for a Healthy Life and promoted continuously by successive London governments since 2003), opened the door for him to work with OMP Architects, McCabe Durney and others on DOEHLG’s Urban Design Guidance.

When the UK returned to planning large new settlements David argued for the community-endorsed technique pioneered at Adamstown for synchronising the delivery of infrastructure to housing sales to be imported. Today, Homes England’s ‘Garden Towns’ new settlements programme is run by a South Dublin CC ex-officer.

David is director of the Housing Design Awards, a partnership between government and industry since 1948 to recognise the best in new-build. www.hdawards.org hosts 7000 images and about 100 revealing short films about winning schemes.

Andrew Beharrell

Senior Advisor
Pollard Thomas Edwards

Andrew is a regular industry commentator and has co-authored and edited a series of influential publications on housing, planning and regeneration issuesIn 2020 Andrew stepped back from Senior Partner to become an advisor to the practice, focusing on research, writing and design review.Andrew Beharrell has designed and delivered many award-winning projects throughout his 35 years with Pollard Thomas Edwards, leading the practice’s diversification from urban regeneration to new rural settlements, and across the housing spectrum to embrace education and town centre mixed-use projects.

Karen Kenny

Karen Kenny is a Senior Adviser in the National, Regional and Urban Planning Policy section at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, where she has worked since 2021.  In this role, she is responsible for matters relating to Project Ireland 2040 implementation, urban design, infrastructure, economic development and regions.  Her responsibilities include overseeing a review of the Sustainable Residential Development in Urban Areas Guidelines for Planning Authorities 2009. 

David Browne FRIAI

David Browne is a former President of the RIAI and chairman of RKD Architects.

Based in Dublin, he has worked on masterplanning, urban design and building projects in Ireland, the UK, Europe, the Middle East, China and Africa. He is one of the leaders of the Irish Cities 2070 Group which is working to envision the future form and sustainability of Irish cities with the many challenges which they face.

Teresa Borsuk

Senior Advisor
Pollard Thomas Edwards

Teresa is a Senior Advisor at Pollard Thomas Edwards and has over 35 years’ experience in the housing, mixed-use and regeneration sectors. She has both designed and delivered a series of successful and award-winning projects, ranging from major mixed-use developments to infill sites and refurbishments. Teresa is a RIBA Client Design Advisor an awards’ judge for a number of national and international architectural awards and a member of several design and quality review panels. In 2015, Teresa was awarded the AJ Woman Architect of the Year.

Gerard Maccreanor, BSc (Hons), BArch, ARB, RIBA

Founding Director, Maccreanor Lavington

Gerard established Maccreanor Lavington, an award-winning architectural practice, with Richard Lavington in the early nineties. Working from offices in London and Rotterdam the experience of the practice is extensive. Gerard has particular expertise of dense, large scale mixed-use regeneration schemes and has led and shaped thinking across the practice’s portfolio. He has led the practice’s sustainability approach through the delivery of Passivhaus projects in the UK and through his own low energy and low carbon family home. He is involved in low cardon research through several academic affiliations and actively promotes urban density and tall buildings as the means to achieve a lower carbon footprint.

Giulia Vallone, MRIAI

Senior Architect, CPIU SSIP, Cork County Council

Giulia is a senior architect with a 20 years’ experience working for the Irish Local Authority. In her role as urban designer within the new CCC Capital Projects Implementation Unit, Giulia focuses on design excellence for public works and townscape through a “people and place” centred design approach generating civic stewardship and placemaking.

She is a passionate believer in the delivery of quality outcomes from multi disciplinary design process applied to all public investments in the urban environment, and not just those traditionally associated with architectural design.

Through established working relationships with governmental agencies such as TII, Irish Water, OPW and most recently NTA, her aim is to influence and coordinate the impact of national strategic infrastructure for the better of local communities and the socio-economic development of towns and villages.Giulia is a member of the RIAI Urban Design Committe and The Academy of Urbanism.

Her work with Cork County Council and local communities has won several national and international design awards and was most recently included in the Green Deal/ New European Bauhaus “ Towards a shared culture of Architecture and high quality environment for everyone” the first EU architectural policy launched in October 2021.

Stewart Logan  

Senior Adviser, National, Regional and Urban Planning Policy
 
Stewart Logan is Senior Planning Adviser in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. He currently leads several work areas including statutory plans policy development, ministerial planning guidelines preparation, regeneration policy, funding programme management and spatial data systems development. He holds an Msc in Town Planning from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and an MBA from Dublin City University. He is an Irish Planning Institute Council Member and is also currently Chair of it’s Public Sector Committee.

Maria Graham 

Assistant Secretary within the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage  

Since November 2018, Maria has had responsibility for the Planning Division, dealing with the appropriate strategic policy and legislative planning framework for both terrestrial and marine spatial planning. Immediately, prior to this position, Maria headed up the Water Division of the Department, working on sectoral reforms, including the establishment, governance and funding of Irish Water. In previous roles within the Department, Maria has had responsibility for planning policy, water capital investment, housing finance and policy and public private partnerships. Prior to joining the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Maria worked in a number of other Government Departments including the Departments of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Social Protection. 

Jim Coady BArch (Hons), MA Urb Des, FRIAI

Consultant to COADY Architects

Jim received his BArch (Hons) from University College Dublin in 1969 before taking a Masters in Urban Design in1972. He returned to Ireland to work with Dublin City Council before joining Delany, McVeigh and Pike in 1973, now OMP, while teaching for three years in UCD.  He later worked in Brady Shipman Martin and where he was partner ‘till 1987.  He established COADY Architects in that year where his primary interests were in education buildings, housing, master planning and urban design: he continues as a consultant to the firm and is a member of the Irish Cities 2070 Group.

Stephen Proctor, MRIAI and Andrew Matthews, MRIAI

Stephen Proctor and Andrew Matthews founded their London based studio Proctor and Matthews Architects in 1988. Their recent portfolio includes a number of award winning residential and mixed-use neighbourhoods which are cited in the recently published National Design Guide and National Design Code Guidance. Stephen and Andrew have lectured and taught extensively in schools of architecture across the UK and Europe including the Universities of Cambridge, Dundee and Sheffield (where they are both Visiting Professors). As members of design review panels within the UK including Architecture and Design Scotland and Design South East they are helping to shape well designed places. They are both members of the RIAI. 

Emmet Humphreys, MRIAI 

Galway City Council

Director of his own Practice 2003-2018, Emmet left private practice to join the Local Authority. His work includes co-authorship West Gate Vision: Drogheda and Boyle 2040. He is Senior Executive Architect for Galway City Council’s Housing Department working on interdepartmental collaboration for physical development projects. He is also a member of the RIAI Urban Design Committee.

Anne Marie O’Connor

Deputy Planning Regulator and Director of Evaluations at the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR)

Anne Marie she is responsible for the assessment of all local authority development plans. Before joining the OPR in 2020, Anne Marie was the Assistant Director of Planning in An Bord Pleanála. She has also worked as a planner in planning authorities and the private sector in both Ireland and the UK.

Mark Henry

Author of 'In Fact: An Optimist's Guide to Ireland at 100'

Mark has spent a lifetime analysing trends, understanding what drives them, and explaining their implications. He trained as a psychologist and led the research and strategy functions of technology companies before turning to work in tourism. Having spent two decades telling people all over the world what a great country Ireland is, he's on a mission to prove that it’s true.

Conference Programme Day 1

Monday, 28 March

Attending a one-day conference entitles you to 5 Structured CPD Points.

Updated Sunday 27 March 17:30

Conference Programme Day 2

Tuesday, 29 March

Attending a one-day conference entitles you to 5 Structured CPD Points.