Pat Barker

Career Barker started with Stokes Brothers and Pym (which later merged into what became KPMG) and despite being told that "ladies don't do accounting" took her accountant's articles there in 1973, as well as beginning her academic career lecturing there. Over time she rose to be a senior lecturer and then Professor of Accounting, and then Associate Dean of the Business School. She became registrar and Vice-President for Teaching and Learning (Academic Affairs) of DCU in 2000, the first woman to hold such a senior role at the university. the first doctorate in accounting in Ireland. and earned a qualification in counselling from Maynooth University. Barker, Patricia; Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, 2009: The Minority Interest: Women Who Succeed in the Accountancy Profession, Barker, Patricia and Lucey, Cormac; Chartered Accountants Ireland, 2012: The Business Compass: Perspectives on Business Ethics, and these papers: Barker, Patricia and Monks, Kathy; DCU Business School (1996): The glass ceiling: cracked but not broken? evidence from a study of chartered accountants, Barker, Patricia, Ní Mhanacháin, Aoife and Monks, Kathy (2001): Drama as an opportunity for learning and development, Journal of Management Development (DOI: 10.1108/02621710110395435).

Public body roles She was appointed a member of the Higher Education Authority, which oversees and partly funds universities and other third-level institutions in Ireland, in 1997; she also chaired its Audit Committee.

Barker accepted an appointment as chairperson of the Blood Transfusion Service Board with effect from April 1999, during a period when the organisation was going through many changes; She made proposals to the Minister of Health at the time, Micheál Martin, regarding improvement of corporate governance, highlighting that the board lacked certain competences, including transfusion medicine and medical production, blood end users, HR, the law, and strategy, while instead including such profiles as a hotelier and a marketing executive. She also expressed concern at the treatment of her inputs and role by the Minister and others. She resigned in August 2001 over the fallout from the ways the centralisation of testing, the future of the Cork branch of the service, and governance were being discussed.

In 2014 she was appointed to the Board of Tallaght University Hospital, reappointed in 2016 for 2017–2020, She has also been a member of the Audit Committee of Ireland's national health authority, the Health Service Executive, and the Irish Courts Service. including chairing the Audit Committee. She was also appointed a director of the Marine Institute from 2013–2018, chairing the Audit and Risk Committee, including as a volunteer counsellor, and served on the board of Women's Aid. She has also been a director of a housing association and Ireland's National Chamber Choir, and they have two children and two grandchildren. She has been a long-term resident of the Malahide area of northern Dublin and she and her husband are active in the Malahide Church of Ireland community, where she served many years as a parochial Mothers' Union committee member. She has served multiple terms as a member of the governing assembly of the Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough, the Diocesan Synod, delegated by her parish, and has been a supplementalist for the Diocesan Council. and was elected a delegate member of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland for 2020 to 2023.

Barker is a yachtswoman and has crewed and captained to Antarctica.