The country’s eye doctors will gather at the Galmont Hotel for two days next week, when Galway hosts the Irish College of Ophthalmologists’ (ICO ) annual conference.
This will bring ophthalmology consultants, trainees, researchers and industry partners to Galway for lectures, presentations, workshops and the college’s AGM.
For those of us with roots in both the city and the specialty, it is a particularly welcome occasion.
Ophthalmologists are medical doctors who, after qualifying in medicine, undertake many years of further postgraduate training in the medical and surgical care of the eye. They diagnose and treat eye disease, manage conditions such as glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and macular degeneration, and perform operations including cataract surgery, retinal surgery and corneal transplantation.
They work in hospital eye units across the country, and in private practice.
They are not to be confused with optometrists, who are not medically qualified, yet the two professions work in harmony, at least in Ireland and Britain.
The ICO is the professional and training body for ophthalmologists in the Republic of Ireland, and its annual conference is the centrepiece of the Irish ophthalmic year.
The choice of Galway in 2026 is no coincidence: the College’s president, Mr Gerry Fahy, is himself Galway-based, now practising at the Galway Clinic, having long served at UCHG.
The ICO itself is a small institution by international standards, but a vital one for the country. It oversees the postgraduate training of ophthalmologists, and runs the Basic and Higher Specialist Training programmes.
It represents the specialty to the Department of Health, the Health Service Executive and the Medical Council. Its annual conference is where this work is reviewed, where research is presented, and where the next generation of ophthalmologists meets the current lot!
It is a competitive speciality to gain entry into. In Britain, figures show it is the busiest outpatient specialty. I expect the numbers in Ireland are similar, but cannot verify at present.
The ICO’s conference programme reflects the clinical breadth of modern opthalmology, and what the College has framed as “effective and sustainable teams” – a recognition that questions facing eye care today are not only about new drugs and new technology, but also about how services are organised, and who delivers them.
There is a wider story here too. Ophthalmology in Britain and Ireland has long had close links, as have many medical, nursing and allied healthcare professions.
Old courtesies
The Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOphth ) is the equivalent body in the United Kingdom. It holds its own Annual Congress each May, and for many years, the ICO meeting and the RCOphth Congress ran in a comfortable, staggered sequence: the ICO one week, the RCOphth the following week. This allowed dual attendance for the substantial number of Irish ophthalmologists who trained in Britain, or who maintain professional ties there, and for UK-based ophthalmologists with Irish roots.
Many Irish ophthalmologists, in earlier generations, such as myself and Mr Fahy, trained in Britain. Many other UK-based ophthalmologists spent their formative years in Ireland.
Mutual recognition of medical qualifications has long underpinned this movement, and the friendships and professional networks formed across Ireland and Britain remain a quiet, but durable, feature of the specialty.
That pattern for Ophthalmology Conferences was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and when in-person meetings resumed, the dates began to clash.
The 2026 calendar, however, sees the staggered pattern restored: Galway closes on the Friday, and the RCOphth Congress in Manchester opens on the following Monday.
Quietly and without fuss, an old courtesy has been re-established, and Mr Fahy and the ICO deserve credit for it.
On my radar in Galway will be improvements to joined-up eye care and patient safety in ophthalmology; closer working between ophthalmology and nursing, optometry and allied healthcare colleagues; surgical eye care closer to home. These are areas in which I have published, and to which I remain committed.
For me, attending this conference is a personal pleasure, as well as a professional one.
As a graduate of what is now the University of Galway, my own path into ophthalmology began here.
To be invited to be a guest of the ICO Annual Conference in Galway in 2026 is heart-warming, and I look forward to watching another sunset on our beloved Galway Bay.
Simon P Kelly, from Barna, is an eye surgeon in Manchester
