EXCLUSIVE: Richard Flood (Shameless) has been cast in ABC’s flagship drama series Grey’s Anatomy. As is customary for Grey’s, Flood will be introduced as a recurring later this season. He will play a key new character, Dr. Cormac Hayes, the new head of Pediatric Surgery at Grey Sloan.

Hayes will fill the position left vacant after Karev, played by original Grey’s Anatomy cast member Justin Chambers, was fired after last season’s finale and now works at Pacific Northwest General Hospital.

Irish actor Richard Flood is probably best known in the U.S. for his role of Ford opposite Emmy Rossum in the eighth and ninth seasons of Showtime’s most popular series, Shameless, in which Grey’s Anatomy EP/showrunner Krista Vernoff served as executive producer.

Flood’s previous work also includes starring roles in the international drama Crossing Lines, which aired as a summer series on NBC, and in the National Geographic movie Killing Kennedy. Overseas, Richard starred in the TV3 (Ireland)/Amazon (US) crime procedural Red Rock and on the BBC’s miniseries Titanic: Blood and Steel. He is repped by More-Medavoy Management, Gersh, and Denton Brierley.