John Travers has devoted a 40-year career to working in the public sector. Having qualified as a town planner, he began his career with the Department of Local Government in 1967.
He then spent three years on scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to work for the IDA and the Department of Economic Planning and Development.
In 1980, after a brief stint at the Department of Finance, he was appointed to the Department of the Taoiseach and was involved in the development of the first social partnership programme in 1987. He moved to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in 1988 where he was closely involved in the Culliton Report on industrial policy, published in 1992.
He was appointed chief executive of Forfas, the national policy advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation when the board was established in 1994 and remained there until 2002.
In 2004, he was appointed to chair the Tourism Policy Review Group which was tasked with increasing the number of overseas visitors from six to 10 million within a ten-year period. He has also acted as director-general of Science Foundation Ireland and board member of the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at UCD. - James Fitzgerald
The full text of the Travers Report is available on www.ireland.com