Dr Clíona Saidléar is the Executive Director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI), national policy specialists on sexual violence. Clíona is an NUIG graduate who went on to earn her MScEcon and PhD from the Aberystwyth School of International Politics.

She currently chairs the Children Living with Domestic and Sexual Violence Ngo coalition. She was a Ministerial appointment to the Higher Education Institutions’ sexual harassment framework technical group and now sits on the HEA advisory body. She has represented Ireland at the UNCSW and was an adviser for a UNWomen project in the Western Balkans and Turkey on the Istanbul Convention as well as working with European NGO partners on developing sexual violence specialization and trans-European indicators of same.

She has chaired the National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender Based Violence Awareness Raising subcommittee, the Charities’ Data Protection working group and the Specialist group on retrospective reporting. She was appointed to the National Statistics Board in 2023.