Kevin Malone: Occupation/Professor of psychiatry, University College Dublin & St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin; co-founder/scientific director of Charity "Turning The Tide of Suicide (3TS)".
Family: Married to Dr Margret FitzGerald (psychiatrist), two kids - Art (18), Hanna-Lil (14)
What figure from the world of health/medicine do you most admire?
Prof Hugh Brady, my ex-Mater Hospital consultant colleague and current president of University College Dublin (watch this space).
What alternative career might you have chosen?
Law, politics, landscape gardening, media or anything with food.
If you were appointed Minister for Health, what would be your first priority?
Resource and open our new, dedicated (built since 2003), state-of-the-art 54-bed psychiatric unit at St Vincent's; establish regional centres of expertise around Ireland dedicated to the management of suicidal depression across the life cycle, available to everyone from Achill Island to Ailesbury Road; and invest in mental health and psychological services across the life cycle in Ireland to be on a par with similar services in other successful European countries.
Do you have a phobia/what is your greatest fear?
That in 10 years' time we will be no further down the road of Turning The Tide of Suicide in Ireland - a terrible/unacceptable legacy to leave our next generation.
Have you ever been a patient and were you a good one?
Touch-wood I've never been in major difficulty. I've been surprisingly good for any lumps and bumps.
What three books would you bring to a desert island?
Golf is not a game of Perfect and Putting out of your Mind by Dr Bob Rotella (both rich metaphors for living life) and The Kindness of Strangers, edited by Don George.
Have you a fail-safe method of dealing with stress?
A hot shower after 18 holes of golf (phone off), "whatever the weather".
What is your favourite TV or radio programme?
Apart from Sport, I love Seinfeld and Scrubs on TV (sorry). Vincent Browne on radio if I get the chance (sorry again!).
If you did not live in Ireland, where would you choose to spend the rest of your life?
New York, New York or South of France.
Summarise yourself in 12 words or less?
Passionate, persuasive, tenacious, slightly cavalier, sports-mad, fun-lovin', absent-minded prof.