Donal Smith

Experience

• 

  Deloitte Ireland

  Jun 2008 - Jun 2008

  Audit Assistant

  Obtained one month experience in the Financial Services department of Deloitte as an audit assistant.

• 

  IBM

  Jul 2008 - Sept 2008

  Financial Assistant

  Worked in the finance department of IBM for two months during college to gain experience in Industry. Main duties were to help in finalising weekly payroll and expenses for the sales teams.

• 

  Ernst & Young

  Sept 2009 - Feb 2014

  Assistant Manager

  Completed training contract, professional exams (ACA) and obtained promotion to Assistant Manager in a period of over four years within the Industrial Commercial and Technologies department of EY, specialising in the audits of pharmaceutical, retail, hospitality, construction and financial software organisations. Main responsibilities included:- Reviewing clients’ accounting, reporting and inventory management systems and controls and preparing internal control reports for presentation to clients management;- Preparing and reviewing financial statements under Irish GAAP and reconciliation between IFRS and US GAAP to Irish GAAP statutory accounts; - Managing the audit team and client budget while reviewing junior staff members audit work papers;- Experience with a number of accounting packages, in particular SAP and Oracle;- Other: Participation in EY graduate recruitment programmes in various universities; and- Other: Instructor of course material to both Irish and UK graduates. This involved two weeks of personal training in instructing and delivery methods and two weeks delivering the training to the new graduates. Show less

• 

  Aer Lingus

  Sept 2014 - Jan 2017

  Responsible for managing the Network Development team in ensuring maximum route profitability of future schedules and completing business cases for board approval relating to new and redeployed routes. Owner of the relationship between Network Planning, Finance, Revenue Management, Procurement, Marketing and Sales departments to ensure alignment across the areas prior to schedule announcement and business case approval. Ownership of the resource budgets and business plans for the Catering and Ground Operation areas, recruiting and managing a team of four to ensure costs remain on target against budget and rosters were published within the timelines agreed with Unions. Business partner for finance at month end to analyse variances in costs versus planned for COO review. Responsible for regaining competitiveness in the market by reducing staff costs through the introduction of various initiatives. Responsible for preparing the financial plan for Ground Operations area and creating new automated templates to track actual costs versus planned using the Time Management System and staff KPI’s versus industry standard.

  • Commercial Planning Manager

    Jun 2016 - Jan 2017

  • Resource Planning Manager - Operations

    Feb 2016 - Sept 2016

  • Business Operations Analyst

    Sept 2014 - Jan 2016
• 

  International Airlines Group (IAG)

  Jan 2017 - Feb 2018

  Group Manager - User Charges and Regulation

  Responsible for the financial planning and analysis of the airport user charges across International Airlines Group. Owner of the relationship between the procurement function and the Finance, Network Planning and Marketing teams in British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia and Vueling, as well as managing the relationship and leading the commercial negotiations on behalf of the group with all airports in Ireland, United Kingdom and Northern Europe.

• 

  Hostelworld Group

  Feb 2018 - Nov 2023

  • Head of Analytics & Insights

    May 2020 - Nov 2023

  • Analytics & Insights Manager

    Feb 2018 - May 2020
• 

  The AA (Ireland)

  Nov 2023 - now

  Director of Analytics