Irish National Committee of The Blue Shield INCBS
The Irish National Committee of the Blue Shield (INCBS) was established in September 2012 following formal accreditation from the international governing body Blue Shield.
The INCBS consists of two representatives from each of the following nominating bodies:
- International Council of Archives (ICA)
- International Council of Museums (ICOM)
- International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
- International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
- CCAAA (The Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations) www.ccaaa.org
One of the major achievements of the Committee has been the promotion of the UNESCO 1954 Hague Convention and its additional 2nd Protocol, which was finally ratified by the Government of Ireland in August 2018.
Preamble to 1954 Hague Convention
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
Committee:
The current committee of the INBSC comprises of:
Chair: Gretchen Allen
Secretary: Elizabethanne Boran (IFLA)
Members:
- Daniel Ayiotis (ICA)
- Susie Bioletti (ICOM Ireland)
- John Geraghty (ICOMOS Ireland)
- Cathal Dowd Smith (ICOMOS Ireland)
- Patrizia La Piscopia (CPP/ World Heritage Expert)
- Members:- Andrew Megaw, Barbara McCormack, Cécile Chemin, Fergus McCormick
Please see brief biographies listed at the end of this page;
The committee also has the mandate to co-opt other members, who have an active role in the delivery of the mission of Blue Shield. Members serve a maximum of four years and are eligible for reappointment for a further term of four years.
INBSC Strategic Plan 2025
The 2025 Strategic Plan of the INCBS, details the key goals that the committee aim to focus on are:
- Raise awareness of the INCBS through capacity building activities, education and training.
- Support the development of proactive protection and risk preparedness in Ireland.
- Strengthen relationships with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (DHLGH), Department of Culture, Communication, and Sport (CCS), DHLGH, Office of Public Works (OPW), the Heritage Council (HC) and relevant bodies.
- Ensure the good governance of the committee.
- Grow and develop presence on social media.
- Build and maintain a satellite website on the Blue Shield International site (theblueshield.org).
- The Committee will continue to build partnerships with the heritage sector in Ireland and internationally.
INBSC Strategic Plan link 2025
INCBS Objectives
Key objectives of the INCBS are:
- To act as a unifying voice for engaging government and funders to understand and accept their responsibilities for protecting long-term access to the cultural heritage.
- To develop plans to enable the INCBS to contribute to national and international efforts to protect the cultural heritage in times of war and natural disasters by means of organising voluntary workers where possible, by programmes of education, and training.
The committee is now focusing on the continued promotion of Blue Shield, through public events introducing Blue Shield to the public and the wider heritage audience and specific training events.
The INCBS will agree to its own rules to govern its business in accordance with the conventions of the International Committee of the Blue Shield.
The INCBS will conduct its business and financial affairs in accordance with the highest standards and shall provide an annual report to the nominating bodies.
The committee can co-opt additional individuals with appropriate expertise.
Blue Shield National Committee Annual Reports are available for download here: https://theblueshield.org/download/national-committee-annual-reports-2022/
History of the INCBS
The UKIRB (UK & Ireland Blue Shield) Committee was inaugurated on 13th March 2001. The UKIRB was located within the National Preservation Office based at the British Library. Over time it became clear that it would be more appropriate to have a separate Irish Blue Shield grouping given the fact that the UKIRB Committee operated within two separate jurisdictions with quite distinct differences in terms of international engagement.
The Irish committee was reconstituted in 2010 under the chairmanship of Dr Michael Ryan, then Director of the Chester Beatty Library and was formally established in 2012.
Previous Committees 2012-2024
2012-2018 – Dr Michael Ryan, Siobhan Fitzpatrick, Colette O’Flaherty, Frances Magee and Helen Hewson
2019-2020 – Lar Joye, Cathy Daly, Deirdre McDermott and Kasandra O’Connell for their hard work to ensure that the ratification of the UNESCO 1954 Hague Convention was achieved in 2018.
2021-2024 – Zoë Reid, Elizabethanne Boran, Jessica Baldwin, Fergus McCormick, Susie Bioletti, Patrizia La Piscopia, Gretchen Allen, Andrew Megaw, Barbara McCormack
INBSC Committee Biographies
Gretchen Allen is a Senior Book and Paper Conservator at the National Archives of Ireland. She has previously held conservation roles with Maynooth University and Cambridge University Library. Throughout her career she has been responsible for interventive conservation treatments, preventive collection care work on environmental monitoring and pest management, bespoke enclosure making, exhibitions, outreach, and disaster management.
Gretchen undertook her BA in Art Conservation at Scripps College, graduating in 2014. Following that, she completed her MA in Book Conservation at Camberwell College of Arts (University of Arts, London) in 2016. Her supplemental training includes a Postgraduate Certification (PGCert) in Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime obtained through the University of Glasgow in 2019. Her academic work focuses on the role of the conservator in mitigating the damage done by the criminal elements of the art market.
Gretchen is a member of the Archives and Records Association (ARA) and the Institute for Conservator/Restorers in Ireland (ICRI). She has been a member of the Irish National Committee of the Blue Shield since 2023 and Chair since January 2025.
Dr Elizabethanne Boran is the Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin. She is the editor of the three-volume Correspondence of James Ussher, 1600-1656, published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2015, and, in addition, she has written on the history of early modern science, book-collecting, libraries, and more generally, the seventeenth-century history of ideas and universities. She is the Irish member of the International Commission for the History of Universities and a member of the committee of the Rare Books Group of the Library Association of Ireland. Elizabethanne joined the Committee as an IFLA representative in 2019 and is currently Secretary.
Commandant Daniel Ayiotis is the Officer-in-Charge of the Military Archives, based at Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines, Dublin. He joined the Army as a Cadet in 2002 and was commissioned to the 27th Infantry Battalion, based between Dundalk and Monaghan, in 2004. During this time he served in several locations and appointments at home and abroad including Lebanon and Kosovo. Daniel joined the Military Archives in 2015 as a Staff Officer and undertook the MA in Archives and Records Management in UCD that same year. His dissertation was on ‘The Developing Archival Heritage of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the Republic of Ireland’, which is reflective of his general areas of interest within the archival research and practice. In 2017 he was appointed Officer-in-Charge of the Military Archives. Daniel joined the Committee as an ICA representative in 2018.
Susie Bioletti is the former Keeper of Preservation & Conservation at Trinity College Library from 2002 to 2023, now retired. Prior to this she worked for the National Gallery of Australia, Newcastle Polytechnic, UK (now the University of Northumbria), and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Susie is a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation, and current board member of the Institute of Conservator-Restorers in Ireland (ICRI). She is an ICOM Ireland representative on the Irish National Committee of the Blue Shield (INCBS).
Susie was instrumental in bringing the Old Library, Trinity College Dublin through Museums Accreditation, and is on the steering committee for the Old Library Redevelopment Programme as Chair of the environmental group.
Susie has published and lectured widely on topics such as art conservation, technical art history, environmental studies, and pigments.
John Geraghty bio to come
Cathal Dowd Smith bio to come
Patrizia La Piscopia is a researcher, lecturer and field archaeologist, with experience on commercial and research excavations in Europe and further afield.
She works in the World Heritage Unit at the National Monuments Service and occasionally lectures on UCD’s post-graduate programme in World Heritage management and Conservation. She is a member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) since 2011. In the past she collaborated with The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), and published extensively in both Irish and International journals. Patrizia joined the Committee as a co-opted member in 2018.
Andrew Megaw has been the Head of Conservation at the National Library of Ireland since July 2023. In this role, he leads, directs and manages the Library’s preservation programmes and projects.
Prior to this, Andrew has worked as a rare book conservator, since completing an MA in Conservation at Camberwell College of Arts, London in 1997.
From 2004 to June 2023, he worked as Senior Conservator of Books at Trinity College Dublin. In this position, he worked specifically on rare books and bound manuscripts from the Library Collections.
In addition, he annually trained and managed teams of preservation assistants who worked on a variety of projects throughout the Old Library. Since these preservation projects began in 2004, approximately 100,000 Long Room books have been treated.
Andrew frequently provides conservation and preservation advice to artists and members of the public. He provides conservation student supervision and gives training to library staff.
He was a visiting conservator on three occasions at St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, at the invitation of the St. Catherine’s Foundation. His personal area of research is 19th century photographically illustrated books.
Barbara McCormack is the Librarian of the Royal Irish Academy, where she is responsible for the strategic direction of the Library and Archive, the information services provided by the Library, and the curation of the world’s largest collection of manuscripts in the Irish language, as well as numerous other manuscript and archival collections, books and collections in other formats. She previously worked as Special Collections Librarian at Maynooth University Library where she had responsibility for the early printed books, manuscripts and archives of St Patrick’s College Maynooth and Maynooth University. She has also worked at the British Library and Trinity College Library, Dublin, and has published in the areas of book collecting in Ireland and Britain, and Irish religious history.