Paddy Hayes

Chief Executive, ESB

Paddy Hayes is Chief Executive of ESB, a leading Irish energy company operating throughout Ireland and the UK. ESB aims to create a brighter, low-carbon, future for the customers and communities it serves, investing in technologies, infrastructure and services to support the clean energy transition. Before his appointment as Chief Executive in 2021, Paddy headed up two of ESB’s main operating divisions as Executive Director of ESB’s Generation and Trading business and then as Managing Director of ESB Networks. He was formerly a board member of the association of European Distribution System Operators (E.DSO) and co-chair of the European Distribution-Transmission Cooperation Platform. Paddy is a Chartered Engineer with degrees in engineering from UCD and an MBA from the University of Warwick. Before moving to the energy sector in 1999, to lead the Synergen joint venture between ESB and Statoil, he worked with British Steel in the UK.