Patrons of the Iona Institute include well-known personages such as Prof Patricia Casey, a senior consultant psychiatrist at the Mater hospital in Dublin and lecturer at UCD, and Irish Timescolumnist and teacher Breda O'Brien.
Others include Fr Fergus O'Donoghue SJ, editor of the Jesuit's Studies quarterly, Dr James Sheehan, founder of the Blackrock, Galway and Hermitage Clinics, all of which operate according to a Catholic ethos, and Fr Vincent Twomey, emeritus professor of moral theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, and editor of the Word magazine.
The chair of the Institute's board of directors is Dr Susan Hegarty, a geography lecturer at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, in Dublin, while the board secretary is Pat Kenny, a lecturer in marketing at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a regular columnist with the Irish Examiner newspaper. Other directors include the brothers Seán and Tom Ascough, engineers with 20 and 15 years of youth evangelisation experience, respectively.
Other members of the seven-person board include: Maeve Kelleher, a stay-at-home mother of six children; Andrew O'Connell, communications director for the Presentation Brothers in Ireland; and John Reid, who is a managing partner at the law firm O'Rourke Reid.
Working for the institute as a researcher will be Tom O'Gorman, a former journalist with The Voice Today publication.
The institute website address is www.ionainstitute.ie