Dr. Ciara McDonnell is a Consultant in Paediatric Endocrinology & Diabetes at Children's Health Ireland based between Temple St & Tallaght. She completed her Undergraduate medical degree at Trinity College Dublin before completing her postgraduate paediatric and specialist endocrine training between the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght, Coombe Women's Hospital and the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. During her time in Australia she developed a keen sub specialist interest in calcium and bone metabolism.

She is a founder member of Our Tribe - the Centre for Rare Bone Disorders in CHI at Temple St. and secured funding for the first stand alone Paediatric DXA service in Ireland which is run as a joint endocrine-radiology initiative at Temple St. Dr. McDonnell is the current convenor of the Bone & Growth plate working group of the European Society of Paediatric Endocrinology, the local convenor of the International Children's conference on Bone Health which is scheduled to be held in UCD in July 2022 and the Paediatric Lead for the Irish application to the European reference network of Rare Bone Diseases [BOND] which was accepted on the 1st January 2022.