Cathal Magee (born 1954) was the Chief Executive Officer of the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland from 2010 to 2012. He is also a non-executive director of insurance company Vhi Healthcare. Magee was born in County Cavan. Education He holds a first class honours degree in Management from the IMI and a MSc in Organizational Behaviour from Trinity College, Dublin. Career He worked for the National Australia Bank Group in the UK and Ireland. He was director of human resources and business restructuring with Bord na Móna. He joined Telecom Éireann, now Eircom, in 1995 as group human resources director, then as head of the company's retail arm. He spent six months as acting chief executive of the company in 2009, during which time he started a major restructuring of Eircom's cost base following negotiations with its trade unions, and helped to scuttle Australian financier Rob Topfer's attempt to capture the business cheaply. He served as acting CEO until Paul Donovan was appointed full-time chief executive. He resigned his positions at Eircom in February 2010. In May 2010, it was announced that Magee would succeed Professor Brendan Drumm as Chief Executive Officer of the HSE. It was stated that Magee was the third choice for the job, behind original front-runner and Minister for Health, Mary Harney's, stated favourite, Professor Tom Keane—and behind Mike Read, an experienced Australian health administrator. Both of these candidates had the advantage of coming from outside the Irish system; Magee's early career was in the health boards, regional precursors to the HSE. A board member of Vhi Healthcare, the new chief executive has a particularly strong background in human resources. In his time with Eircom, he was noted for adopting a low-key, conciliatory approach to the unions, while at the same time delivering a major reform package for the telecoms company. He formally began his role on 1 September 2010 for a five-year term. In May Magee said the executive had nearly €1 billion less to spend this year than in 2010 but the demands on it continued to increase, with 7,000 extra attendances at hospital emergency departments in the first three months of this year alone. He said the system was not currently working well enough for the patient, as evidenced by waiting list figures and the number of patients on trolleys in emergency departments each day. The neglect of primary care had contributed