Foley Ryan Communications & PR Agency

Mairéad Foley has a strong Public Relations and Public Affairs track record covering both the private and public sectors. Her integrity and sound judgement have added value to a diverse range of organisations and individuals covering areas including finance, education, high tech, environment and not-for-profit.

She has established and maintained a strong media presence for clients in the private and public sectors. She also advises organisations on how to influence and shape legislative change.

For some clients she provides strategic communications advice which may be implemented by client in-house teams while for others she is lead in devising, managing and overseeing the execution of strategic communications initiatives. These can range from building and sustaining a media profile to public information programmes.

She writes extensively for media, traditional and social media, and regularly has client pieces published in national media.

Mairéad is an experienced facilitator working for boards, executives and others in helping shape policies and developing strategic approaches to implementation of such policies. Among her many achievements is a national facilitation for a major public sector body arising from which she drew up a report that informed national policy considerations.

Mairéad undertakes media and speech training skills, on a confidential basis, to a diverse range of clients. She also advises individuals and organisations in crisis management.

Mairéad holds a Master's degree in Commerce (Government & Public Policy).

Earlier in her career she was a very successful presenter of welfare advice on RTE’s ‘Live at 3’ TV programme with Derek Davis and Thelma Mansfield. For a number of years she also broadcast on local radio.

Mairéad was a central member of the strategy team for, and managed the launch of, the extraordinarily successful national alcohol awareness campaign for the Department of Health and Children. She was also responsible for devising a very successful campaign on pensions aimed at employees, predominately in their 20s and early 30s in a high tech company.

She has worked as Press Adviser to Ministers and acted as spokesperson for two separate Government Departments. She lectured widely on the Social Welfare and PRSI systems to a range of organisations, including the Institute of Public Administration.

Mairéad chaired the National Committee for Development Education, in a voluntary capacity, for a period of five years. She served as a member of the Ireland Aid Review team for the Department of Foreign Affairs, influencing and shaping the 2002 report, A Review of the Development Cooperation Programme of the Government of Ireland.

She is a founding member of Friends of the Grand Canal.

Tim Ryan is a former secondary school teacher with an honours degree in English and Latin. He later worked as a freelance journalist in his native Tipperary before joining the Cork Examiner as a senior journalist. His career took him to Dublin where he worked as political journalist and News Editor with the Irish Press Group before setting up his own public affairs company, Tim Ryan Communications, in 1997.

Tim monitors political debates both in Europe and Dail Eireann. As the Irish representative for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), he organises regular courses on public affairs for foreign parliamentarians and political activists. He is a former Chairman of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ) and a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). 

Tim Ryan is author of a number of books and political biographies including the best seller, Mara, PJ (Blackwater 1992).