Deputy Director, Fiscal, Economy & Trade Group, Northern Ireland Office

Continuing Policy Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy

Ciarán Hayes has served in several roles in the Northern Ireland Office, having been Deputy Director, NI Protocol and FTA Group, and Deputy Director, Data Strategy. He was previously Principal Private Secretary and before than, Deputy Director - Frontiers, Domestic Policy and Implementation, Department for Exiting the European Union from 2017 to 2020. Prior to that, he worked in the Strategy Unit of the Department of Health and Social Care, as Branch Head - Workforce Strategy. Before taking up this role in 2014, he was Head of the Higher Education, Science and Innovation Branch at HM Treasury, where he led HM Treasury’s work on the expansion of the Small Business Research Initiative.

Before this, he worked at the Department for Education (DfE) as team leader for Sure Start & Early Intervention (2011-12) and Head of the Economic Analysis Unit (2010-11) working on the 2010 Spending Review. He spent the previous five years as a Fast Stream economist and then Economic Adviser at the DfE’s predecessor Departments (DCSF and DfES) working on policies such as school competition and choice, early years education and children’s policy, payment by results and social impact bonds.

Ciarán read Economics and Management at the University of Oxford before completing a Master's in European Social Policy at the London School of Economics.