Job Title:
Chief Executive Officer
Employer:
Safefood
County:
Cork
Closing Date:
3pm, Thursday, 4th September 2025
Salary:
€132,248
About the Employer:
The Food Safety Promotion Board ("FSPB") / Safefood is one of six North/South Implementation Bodies established under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the British Irish Agreement Act 1999 and the North/South Co-Operation (Implementation Bodies) (Northern Ireland) Order 1999. Safefood's headquarters are in Little Island in Cork. Safefood is funded and sponsored jointly by the Department of Health, Ireland (DoH IE) and the Department of Health, Northern Ireland (DoH NI).
Safefood is responsible for promoting awareness and knowledge of food safety and nutritional issues among the public, professionals with an interest in, or responsibility for, food safety, and the food industry. Safefood's key and priority function is to bring about general acceptance that responsibility for the provision of safe food is shared among producers, processors, distributors at all levels, caterers and the general public.
Safefood carries out this function by raising awareness through public campaigns, conferences, training and advising professionals and the general public. Safefood is also charged with supporting and enhancing North/South scientific co-operation, and links between institutions working in the field of food safety - laboratories, statutory food safety enforcement agencies, and international and domestic research bodies. Its core work focuses on increasing awareness on the importance of food safety and on healthy eating to a variety of audiences.
Safefood operates across the two jurisdictions under the policy direction of the North South Ministerial Council (NSMC) and the two sponsor Departments in Ireland and Northern Ireland and is accountable to the Houses of the Oireachtas and the Northern Ireland Assembly
About the Role:
The Chief Executive Officer ("CEO") provides leadership, management and accountability for Safefood, managing internal and external relationships and encouraging close and effective cooperation with other relevant agencies and a range of professionals involved in food safety, healthy eating and nutrition across the island of Ireland. The CEO will lead a mix of technical and administrative staff working as a coherent inter-disciplinary team. In addition, Safefood's budget for 2025 is of the order of €7.97 million (Stg £6.85 million).
The CEO has a major influencing role with the public, professionals, producers and policy makers. In addition, the post-holder has a major role to play in the overall development of a food safety culture across the island of Ireland. Within this context, the post-holder must influence industry to accept primary responsibility for the production of safe food.
Safefood utilises a robust scientific evidence base as the foundation to all its promotion and communication activities. Food safety and nutrition information from its own externally commissioned research will also influence government policy development. By the use of surveillance data, Safefood can identify relevant trends and changes and use data and insights as a means of influencing policy and informing interventions.
The quality of the scientific information supplied, combined with Safefood's effective communication style, accessibility and its trusted profile, all influence the public perception of its value.
In addition, the CEO is required to set the standards that will ensure that Safefood maximises its influence on the public. The post-holder is required to both develop the organisation's capacity and capability, and manage significant external relationships, e.g., the public, the statutory agencies, the Departments, the food industry, local authorities, NGO's, research bodies, and professional groupings, etc., and that is central to effective job performance and impact. The post-holder is also required to manage significant internal relationships with the professionals on a multi-disciplinary team basis
About You:
The successful candidate should demonstrate evidence of having:
• A minimum of five years senior management experience in an organisation of similar or greater size and complexity, as CEO, or a member of the organisation's Senior Management Team (SMT), working directly and accountable to the CEO or equivalent;
• A proven track record of achievement in posts at senior management level within the public, private, voluntary or community sectors, or in professional practice;
• Experience of managing budgets of a significant scale;
• Experience of executing and delivering change in a multi-disciplinary and complex environment;
• Ability to set challenging goals and implement effective performance management;
• Ability to anticipate political sensitivities and complexities and respond in an informed and constructive manner;
• Ability to facilitate collaboration, partnerships and networks internally and externally to achieve common goals;
• Excellent communications skills and the ability to work effectively with all stakeholders;
• Experience of sound judgement, strong leadership qualities, organisational, people management and interpersonal skills and an ability to motivate staff; and
• An understanding or ability to acquire an understanding of the different legal, administrative and industrial relations frameworks in both jurisdictions.
The Closing Date for this competition is Thursday, 4th of September at 3pm.
We are committed to a policy of equal opportunity and encourage applications under all nine grounds of the Employment Equality Act.
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