Mr. Mark Candon:

My name is Mark Candon. I was asked last night to speak to the committee so my presentation will not be anywhere near as refined and smooth as those who have gone before me. In terms of a football analogy, it occurs to me in listening that we all play what is put in front of us. I walk in every day as a teacher and that is what is in front of me and what I must deal with. Mammy gets up in the morning, there is one child bouncing off this wall and another off that wall and that is what Mammy must deal with. I will continue on from where Ms Quinn finished. Colleagues here spoke about the three areas. We are from the inner city, if I may be so bold as to say. We are the original and best but what is interesting is that we might have been forgotten. I am fascinated by and watch very carefully what is going in these areas, such as Limerick Regeneration. I am always digging for ideas. Although we had Tony Gregory at one stage and social partnership grew out of it and we had different organisations like the Inner City Organisations Network, I am jealous of the focus, organisation and direction I see growing in these organisations. Ms Quinn made the point that it is business as usual and it has not worked. This is a great place to start.

We launched a report last week entitled "The Boundary Wall". A group of us got together out of a slight sense of frustration. It involved those of us working in schools and early years education and all the organisations dealing with children and young people in the community getting together to ask the community and children for their perspectives and what had changed. It is something of a mixed bag. From one perspective, we could say that things have really improved. As a principal in the senior boys school in Sheriff Street, I can say that the Celtic tiger hit us about 2006 and 2007. I was not getting an outbreak of impetigo and scabies every year in the school. We started having a little traffic jam at the gate in the evening. It dawned on me that no parents had cars up to the late 2000s. It came in around 2007 and 2008 and left in 2010 and we feel we are back in the struggle against poverty again.

I could tell the committee that I inherited a school that was in bits, which was true. It had a daily attendance rate of 84% and in ten years, we moved that to 94%. When I inherited the school, the percentage of children missing 20 days or more in 2005 was 28% to 30%. In 2010, this percentage was 10%. That is all marvellous and makes great headlines in newspapers but it is not working. I concur with my colleagues here. I am very interested in Mr. Kelly's work with early years - the age group between 0 to 3 referred to in the curve by James Heckman from the Geary Institute. I would come back to what Professor Kathleen Lynch said at our launch, which is that equality of opportunity can only be gained when there is greater equality of condition. In our country, we have a top and a bottom. I use the Celtic tiger analogy again but it fascinated me to see kids in certain families in 2007 and 2008 showing up regularly on time because perhaps Daddy got a job doing a bit of scaffolding and there was a bit of work for Mam. Suddenly people had some hope. We try to run what we do on respect, hope and trust. These people have done a fantastic job.

We are hearing about a bottom-up effort and bottom-up striving. Unless it is led from the very top - this is a small country - I do not know whether we will achieve the outcomes we need. The outcomes I need, because I will retire in about 15 years time, are to avoid a pension crisis. That means all the lads in my school must do well and get jobs so that my public service pension can be paid. We all think from our own perspective. I appeared in a programme called "Townlands" in 2000 or 2001. I spoke about what these people are talking about, namely, a continuum of support from the cradle onwards. One sees the anger in young people because I am telling kids that if they come to school and work hard, they will do well. Lads have come back and told me that they worked hard but that it did not happen for them. That is what Ms Quinn says and is so true. In North Wall, we had a load of unemployed dockers and seamstresses by 1980. When I look at all the things we have done, today we have exchanged that for a load of unemployed painters and decorators trained in FÁS and unemployed hairdressers.

The challenge is there. I agree with all of the early years stuff but to make it work, I suggest that any report produced by the committee needs, to use a terrible phrase, a tsar. I need to be accountable. I do not need to sit in the North Wall Education and Welfare Group and have a veto because I need to protect and manage my little school and because I must fight with somebody next year to get funding. Technically, we have subsidiarity so we are watching each other all the time. This the way all of us must do business. We are all concerned about where the next bit of money will come from and how we do this and that. Policy is so interesting because we get policies that really work for us and at the same time, we get other policies that work against us. I was talking to Mr. Gannon on the way over and we said that there is some great work going on in the new Department of Children and Youth Affairs and we have a wonderful piece of legislation. I do not like my 15 year olds having guns hidden in the back of the garden, which is pretty much a reality. Services like SWAN Youth Service make a huge difference in this regard. These are kids with challenges but SWAN Youth Service helps keep them off the street and out of prison. However, its budget has been cut by €65,000. We need a tsar. It needs to be at the level of the Taoiseach's or Tánaiste's office. It need to look at areas like Waterford, Limerick, Cork, Ballymun and Tallaght. It also needs to look at the inner city. I said to Mr. Gannon that North Wall is very small and has only 2,000 people but perhaps the inner city could be looked at. They need to come in, look at services and say there needs to be some rationalisation and focus and start in terms of what Mr. Kelly is talking about with building resilience and supporting families.

Our frustration results from us knowing what we can do. It is about making it happen. Unless this is led from the very top of whatever Government is in power, it will not work. We often talk about the Finnish experience. They do the following things well - structure, planning and strategy. Perhaps it is not an Irish thing but it is something we do not do as well. Finland got rid of its inspectors in 1995. It had a banking crisis and put the money elsewhere in education. To support the excellent work that is ongoing, we need to try as best we can to maintain the funding and supports we have but to develop and get where we want to be. Our vision is children going to college and being happy and sustaining those communities. It needs to be led from Dáil Éireann, the Government of the day and the Taoiseach and Tánaiste's offices.