Professor Conlon is a graduate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He undertook nephrology fellowship training at Duke University, North Carolina, where he served as Assistant Professor for four years before returning to Ireland in 1998. Based at Beaumont Hospital since then — home of the National Kidney Transplant Service — he has published almost 300 peer-reviewed papers.
In 2014 he co-founded the Irish Kidney Gene Project, which has studied over 1,800 Irish patients to uncover the genetic causes of inherited kidney disease. His clinical expertise spans transplantation, rare kidney disease, home dialysis, and ICU nephrology, making him one of Ireland’s most influential figures in renal medicine.
In April 2026, Prof. Peter Conlon was appointed to the post of Clinical Lead in the HSE’s Organ Donation Transplant Ireland (ODTI) office. He takes over the role from Dr. Brian O’Brien, a consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at Cork University Hospital.
ODTI is the HSE office responsible for overseeing organ donation and transplant services in Ireland and ensures the quality and safety of organs for transplantation, with the National Organ Procurement Service available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Specialist organ donation personnel are based in each health region, including organ donation nurse managers and clinical leads, providing support, advice, training, and education to staff in emergency departments, theatres, and intensive care units.
Ireland operates three adult specialist transplant centres — Beaumont Hospital for kidneys, the Mater Misericordiae Hospital for heart and lung, and St Vincent’s Hospital for liver and pancreas, whilst paediatric kidney transplants are carried out in Temple Street Children’s University Hospital.
In this interview, Prof. Conlon speaks about his new appointment and plans in the role.
Acknowledging the commencement of Part 2 (Transplantation) of the Human Tissue Act (2024) in June last year as a landmark in the development of the organ donation and transplantation service in Ireland, Prof. Conlon identified the next step as being the development of a strategic communications plan that brings together the respective strengths of the HSE, healthcare professionals and community partners to educate the public about the importance and success of organ donation for transplantation.
In 2025, 202 organ transplants took place in Ireland — a decline from 263 the previous year. Viewed in the context of the commencement of the Human Tissue Act, Prof. Conlon highlighted the need for year-round positive public messaging around organ donation and transplantation; “The reality of the decline in transplant activity in 2025 underlines the fact that legislation alone cannot drive cultural change. What is needed is a coordinated, year-round public awareness strategy that embeds donation into the national conversation every month of the year.”
Prof. Conlon continued, “A strategic plan built on genuine partnership — bringing together ODTI’s clinical authority and national infrastructure, the unmatched community reach and lived-experience credibility of the Irish Kidney Association, and other community organisations, community pharmacists, An Post, GP practices, schools, workplaces, and faith communities — would allow each partner to contribute their distinct strengths within a unified, coherent framework.”
Recognising the importance of any messaging about organ donation reaching the widest possible audience, Prof. Conlon highlighted the need to take a multi-media approach; “Organ donation is one of the most naturally compelling subjects available to any journalist, broadcaster, or content creator. It sits at the intersection of life, death, love, medicine, law, and community and it does so with a cast of real people whose stories carry extraordinary emotional weight.”
Some of the most powerful media content in the organ donation space comes from donor families who have chosen to speak publicly about their decision to donate at the worst moment of their lives.
Many donor families have shared that if they had not been asked about organ donation, they may never have considered it — a powerful reminder that media coverage of donor family experiences can normalise the conversation and encourage others to have it before a crisis strikes.
“A genuinely inclusive awareness strategy must also engage community leaders, faith organisations, multilingual media, and trusted community intermediaries to ensure that the conversation about organ donation reaches and respects every community in Ireland.”
Prof. Conlon expressed a strong interest in also shining a light on the process of organ donation and the healthcare professionals involved; “Beyond personal stories, organ donation offers compelling content about the extraordinary clinical and logistical feat that every transplant represents.”
An organ procurement coordinator is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The behind-the-scenes world of organ donation — the midnight phone calls, the retrieval teams, the race against the clock — is the material of compelling documentary and feature journalism.
Figures on transplant numbers, waiting list sizes, and donor rates provide a recurring, reliable news hook that keeps organ donation in the media cycle throughout the year. Prof. Conlon noted that the publication of the National Office of Clinical Audit (NOCA) Potential Donor Audit Report (2024) is scheduled for later this year and looked forward to seeing it expand beyond the six largest hospitals in the country that it currently covers.
In looking at the role of the community pharmacy sector in the promotion of organ donation, Prof. Conlon stated that; “The IPU represents approximately 2,300 pharmacists working in more than 1,800 community pharmacies throughout the country. No other healthcare setting matches this combination of geographic reach, daily footfall, and public trust.”
He continued; “Pharmacies are present in every town and village in Ireland, open long hours, accessible without an appointment, and staffed by healthcare professionals who know their communities and their patients personally. For ODTI, this network represents an extraordinarily valuable but significantly underutilised asset in the effort to embed organ donation awareness into everyday Irish life.”
The IPU’s explicit commitment to collaborating with patient advocacy groups to demonstrate the value of community pharmacy to patients creates an opening for structured partnership between the IPU, ODTI, and existing partners such as the Irish Kidney Association. The infrastructure for expanded pharmacy-based health promotion is now being built; the case for including organ donation within that infrastructure is compelling and timely.
Prof. Conlon believes the ambition should be that every person in Ireland who collects a prescription, asks a question of their pharmacist, or simply walks into their local pharmacy encounters — in a natural, unhurried, non-clinical way — the prompt to think about organ donation and to have the conversation with their family.
In summary, organ donation is not simply a health topic that occasionally generates media interest, it is a subject that continuously produces the raw material of great journalism: authentic human emotion, moral complexity, scientific wonder, policy significance, and community connection. Prof Conlon concluded, “the challenge for ODTI, and their community partners is not simply to generate stories but to tell them consistently, strategically, and year-round in a way that encourages an organ donation conversation in every household across the country.”
Colin White
National Advocacy Manager, Irish Kidney Association
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