Christine O'Malley, Consultant geriatrician, Nenagh General Hospital, and president of the Irish Medical Organisation.
Personal/family: I live in Dromineer on Lough Derg with my partner Tom, who has a son and daughter.
What figure from the world of medicine or health do you most admire?
The doctors and nurses who fight for patients every day in the front line of our health services.
What other career might you have chosen?
I also had a place in college to do engineering. That's a strange thought now.
If you could grant three wishes for the health service, what would they be?
Put doctors and other health professionals back at the heart of health service planning. Develop extra acute hospital beds in acute medical units and ringfence surgical beds to allow GPs to refer directly to hospital wards as they used to be able to do. Make people recognise that despite subsidies, Irish private hospitals remain niche specialists that don't treat A&E patients.
What is your greatest fear?
Being ignored.
Have you ever been a patient and were you a good one?
Yes, I have been a patient and I think I was a good one.
When or where are you happiest?
No phones, no TV, no radio, no newspapers, a glass of wine looking out over Dromineer Bay.
How do you cope with stress?
Reading the Sunday magazines and then Sunday newspapers' business pages.
What is the trait you most admire in yourself?
I consider all views.
What is the trait you most dislike in yourself?
Again, I consider all views.
Do you use alternative or complementary medicine or therapies?
Yes. Modern medicine is great, but we will never have all the answers.
Who or what makes you laugh?
Listening to economists talking about a market in private healthcare in Ireland.
What is your motto?
Complain once, complain twice, third time get out there and do something.
What is your favourite TV or radio programme?
O'Brien on Song and anything on radio not to do with the news. I forget to watch the TV.
What books would you bring to a desert island?
All those books I don't have time to read at the moment. I could tackle Proust and Joyce but I'd also have to bring some old-fashioned favourites such as A Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey and In the Steps of the Master by HV Morton. I also would bring what Tom regards as 'pulp fiction'.
In conversation with Fiona Tyrrell