ANN LOUISE GILLIGAN, PhD was appointed to the staff of St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, in 1976, and has worked in the area of teacher education at undergraduate and post-graduate level for the past thirty years. She established and directed its Educational Disadvantage Centre, and has lectured and published on the philosophy of the imagination, philosophies of difference and educational equality. In 2001, she was appointed by the Irish Minister for Education to establish and chair the National Education Welfare Board. Ann Louise loves travel, wine, jazz and golf on a good day.

PÁDRAIG O'KEEFFE is from Cobh, Co Cork. A former Legionnaire, he is now a security expert who works in the most dangerous parts of the world.

RALPH RIEGEL lives in Cork. He has worked as a journalist for several newspapers including The Cork Examiner, The Evening Echo, The Evening Herald and The Sunday Independent and is the southern correspondent for The Irish Independent. He is also a regular contributor to RTÉ, BBC and TV3 and to British newspapers including the (London) Independent and The Daily Telegraph.

Paul Campbell is the author of the number one best-seller “I’ll Stop Tomorrow. This powerful story of his recovery from alcoholism was first published in Ireland has now gone into publication in Russia.

Paul came from a good middle class family; his father was an eminent psychiatrist and he spent his early childhood in England and Trinidad in the West Indies. He later went to boarding school in Dublin. He walked away from collage where his father wanted him to study medicine.