Brendan Tuohy
Sunday October 25 2009
UNTIL 2007, Brendan Tuohy was the top civil servant at the Department of Communications, heading it up during a pivotal era. Eircom had just been privatised, Comreg would be established under new communications legislation for the digital era, and major challenges of communications infrastructure issues needed to be tackled.
Tuohy began his civil service career in the Department of the Environment in the mid-Eighties. He progressed to assistant-secretary in what was then the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications and was responsible for the corporate governance of the state companies, and public sector reform from 1992 to 1997.
He had responsibility for the communications sector (telecommunications, postal, ecommerce and later broadcasting) from 1997 to 2000.
In 2000, Tuohy was appointed secretary-general of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources (now the Department of Communications Energy and Natural Resources), where he stayed until retiring in 2007.
During that time he saw in major broadband-infrastructure initiatives such as the Government's €65m metropolitan area network (MAN) strategy and the Group Broadband Scheme.
Earlier this year he joined the Quinn Group board. He also chairs Vyro-Games, a start-up technology company and is a non-executive director at Wind Energy Direct.
Mr Tuohy graduated from UCC in 1977 in civil engineering and achieved an MSc in public management in 1994.
In July he was appointed by the Government to chair a group that will oversee the development of Cork's Spike Island as a major tourist attraction. He set up his own management consultancy company, Nostos, in 2008.
- Roisin Burke
Originally published in
