Oisín McGann's Blog
Wondering Aloud

Yes. Believe the hype. It’s that good.

Three of the most fundamental elements of any story are character, setting and the problem that forms the basis of your plot. Having to teach this on courses (particularly to children) has really forced me to tackle the defining of these elements in simple terms. You must to able to separate them out properly in order to weave them together into a gripping and coherent tale. So when a story comes along in which the character, setting and problem are one and the same thing, any storyteller really has to sit up and take notice.

This is by no means the first film in which one person enters another person’s dreams. In ‘Dreamscape’ in 1984, Dennis Quaid’s character does this very thing, and it is Freddy Krueger’s modus operandi in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, also from 1984. Although one was trying to save lives, while the other was out to take ‘em in as gruesome a way as possible. Funny how coincidences like that happen in films (and books) – and weirdly related to the subject at hand – but I’ll post on that another day. Entering someone else’s dreams is an idea that lends itself well to film.

But ‘Inception’ takes it all to an astonishing new level. Structured initially as a heist film or a spy thriller, it diverges from that by having the ‘place’ they want to break into as a man’s dream. But it’s one in which the team’s architect has designed a maze-like reconstruction of reality, akin to a stage on which the target can play out his dream. The challenge is to plant an idea so deep in his sub-conscious that he believes he came up with it himself – hence the title. To do this, they must stage a dream, within a dream, within a dream. And to make things even more complicated, there is a sub-conscious saboteur among them.

It all sounds very abstract, but Nolan’s proven himself a master of using thrilling plotlines, stunning visuals and engaging characters to convey challenging ideas (a man dressed as bat in the ‘Batman’ films, the possibility of the existence of real magic in ‘The Prestige’, or the head-spinning backwards plotting in ‘Memento’). But even for him, this must have been a tough one. It doesn’t show.

I don’t want to give too much away (which would actually be quite hard to do with this film in a blog post), but I’ve seen ‘Inception’ twice and the second time was almost better than the first. First time round, there were small issues with the plotting that bugged me, but Nolan managed to convince me second time round (or maybe I was just having such a good time, I was in a forgiving mood). My mind keeps going back to the climax of the film; three parallel countdowns, each one linking up to the next, each using the same team of characters, each pushing the drama to the last second, and all backed up by a profound and emotionally rich exploration of character. Holy shit, the balls this must have taken to make. And it’s not often you hear the audience in a cinema gasp at the last second of a film (which happened both times).

If you haven’t seen this film, go and see it. If you’re too young, look forward to seeing it as soon as you can. This is the best thing I’ve seen this year (yes, even better than ‘Toy Story 3′ – sorry, Pixar), it’s the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. It gave me that buzz I used to get when I was a teenager reading a great book or watching a great film, the buzz that made me want to tell stories. That’s a rare thing for me these days. Thanks Mr Nolan.

One of our roving Weird-Wide News reporters wandered into a big toyshop last week (you would think they had better things to do). But while pushing themselves around in a trolley, they  spotted a whole wall of Armouron toys. I was amazed to hear they were finally out (nobody told me), but happy to see them on the shelves.

These suits of armour have special joints that mean you can switch parts and make your own combinations – a bit like Lego you can wear.

The first two books have been out a few months now; ‘The Armoured Ghost’ and ‘Lying Eyes’. But it normally works the other way around – toys and TV or other merchandise come out first. I didn’t come up with the idea for the armour, I was just brought in to write four books to help set up the world, the characters and the first few stories. The next two books out are by Richard Dungworth, who has also done a few Dr Who books. After that, my third and fourth one should come along.

Apart from the money (obviously), I got into the project for the experience of working on something that offered opportunties in other areas. I was into loads of these kinds of franchises  when I was a kid – Star Wars, Action Force, Transformers – and it was a kick to be involved in helping develop a project this size. Publishing is always a team effort, but normally it’s a writer sitting on their own coming up with the ideas at the start. This was almost more like when I worked in animation, where different disciplines are brought in at different stages.

The principle behind the design of the toys also chimes with an issue I’ve long been concerned about – that of kids dropping their TV remotes, their games controllers (and yes, even their books) and going and playing outside. This armour will not protect your little ones if they choose to run about kicking the crap out of each other, but it should fuel a few fertile young imaginations in a way that gets them physically active, and that can only be a good thing.

It’s a necessary quality in any writer that they be curious. It’s a circular thing really; you’re curious about life, so you write about it to help you sort it out in your own head and communicate those thought processes to others. And once you’re in the habit of writing, you look for more things to write about.

But it’s not just about questioning the things around you – you also need to have an interest in human nature, and some of us can become obsessed with the idea of perception, and how real our world is, or our experiences within that world. Writers like Philip K. Dick have based whole careers on those kinds of questions.

It’s a theme that seems to have become increasingly popular in our entertainment, the more we engage with virtual worlds in our everyday life, and the boundaries between the virtual and the real begin to thin out. It could well happen that, at some time in the future, perfectly sane people might not be able to tell the difference.

A few stories have tickled my interest in this kind of thing lately. ‘Moon’ is a subtle, quietly creepy story of one man working in a mining base on the dark side of the moon, with only a computer for company. The character, played by Sam Rockwell – one of those effortlessly versatile actors who can switch character with ease – suffers an accident while outside on the surface. The events that follow make him question if everything his employers are telling him is true or indeed, even the course of his own life.

‘The Box’ is directed by the man who brought us the excellent ‘Donnie Darko’, and starts with a normal middle-class couple being made a simple offer with far-reaching consequences: They are given a box with a button on top by a polite and enigmatic man with gruesome burn scars to the side of his face. As observers, we know that this man is somehow connected with the CIA. If the couple push the button, they will be paid a million dollars in cash. But pushing the button also means that someone they don’t know will die. What follows is not only a search to learn the story behind this mysterious man and his box, but also an exploration of the consequences of decisions that change our lives, and the lives of other people.

‘Exam’ is a film based entirely in one room, not unlike ‘Twelve Angry Men’, except that here we have eight ultra-ambitious candidates going for an extremely high-powered, but unknown job. They have eighty minutes to provide one answer, and there are a few simple rules they cannot break, including not being allowed to talk to the examiners, or leave the room. But when the clock starts and they turn over their sheets of paper, there is no question. Investigation and scheming ensue as they build to a dramatic stand-off between each other and ultimately, the faceless company. A brave, intriguing, but quite simple film that kept me gripped until the end.

Cory Doctorow’s book, ‘Little Brother’, is a bit heavy on technical detail (which I found interesting – and useful – but others may not), but it’s the best novel I’ve read yet on the modern surveillance culture that’s creeping over us. Set in San Francisco, it tells the story of a teenage hacker named Marcus and his friends who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a massive terrorist attack rocks the city. They are picked up by Homeland Security and subjected to imprisonment, interrogation, isolation and torture. Marcus comes out a changed young man, determined to fight this paranoid, dangerous and counter-productive new culture of suspicion. Doctorow proceeds to lay down a tense, fast-paced story that opens the reader’s eyes to some very dodgy modern surveillance techniques and how they can be fooled by a bunch of motivated teenage kids or the terrorists they’re designed to stop, but they make life a misery for everyone else.

I was going to include ‘Inception’, Christoper Nolan’s new film, in this post, but it really deserves a section all on its own.

Last week, I joined a bunch of writers and illustrators to have a lunch with Children’s Laureate, Siobhan Parkinson. The location was Airfield in Dundrum, which has nothing to do with airplanes, but is in fact a farm in the suburbs of Dublin which has a small cafe/restaurant, a farm shop and a vintage car collection, among other things.

An eclectic mix of locations that was well suited to this gathering of diverse (but all very good-natured and entertaining) personalities. Siobhan wanted to talk about what she intended to do during her two years as Laureate, and to get our input. In the photo, left to right, is: Niamh Sharkey, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, Michael Emberley, the Honourable Siobhan, some eejit at the back who didn’t smile at the right time, Marita Conlon-McKenna, Jane Mitchell, Sarah Webb and Aubrey Flegg. Mags Walsh from CBI was there too, but somebody had to hold the camera.

You may notice that I’m wearing a shirt in the photo. Despite the occasion, this was not an attempt on my part to look respectable – it was just what I had on that day. The fact that I almost always wear t-shirts to all but the most solemn occasions was brought home to me the last time I put on a shirt, and my stepson asked what I was ‘all dressed up for’.

Apart from eating a lovely lunch and talking shop (writers and illustrators are as bad as any other profession when you group them together), we discussed strategy. Siobhan intends to focus on two things that she hopes will promote the reading of books and the creation of them

First, she wants to push the idea of school libraries. This is not something we do very well in Ireland. Having a separate room, just for books (along with computers, audio books, comics and magazines etc) is still a bit more than many in the education system seem able to conceive. And actually putting a librarian in there too? Preposterous!

Where you do find decent libraries in schools, it tends to be down to the initiative of a few individuals, rather than some policy (and funding) delivered from on high. We’re supposed to be a country that takes literature seriously. We can do a lot better.

The second focus of her campaign is to bring quality books from other countries and other languages to Ireland. We’re not great at this either, but this is a problem across the English-speaking world. Lots of other countries translate our books into their languages; we’re slow to return the favour.

If you think books published in foreign languages just may not be relevant to our culture, or may not appeal to young English-speaking readers, try a few of these on for size: ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ (French), ‘Inkheart’ (German), ‘Sophie’s World’ (Norwegian), ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ (German), ‘The Little Prince’ (French), ‘Pippi Longstocking’ (Swedish) and, of course, the magnificent ‘Asterix’ (French). The collective sales figures and critical acclaim speak for themselves. And do I really need to mention Manga? American, however, does not count as a foreign language (sorry guys, but you see enough action as it is).

Siobhan also wants to get children’s books taken more seriously on the literature stage in Ireland. We have the most passionate readership, the most profound effect on our readership, we have internationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning authors, and we achieve some of the highest sales in the world of literature . . . and we’re still treated like a cottage industry.

Our new Laureate is a charming, resourceful and willfully stubborn woman. Expect progress.

Well . . .  no, not quite.

But I was recently interviewed by Olive O’Brien for her new children’s book blog, Lilliput Library, on the Hello Magazine’s website.

One question that came up during the interview with Jackie Hayden in the Riverbank Arts Centre on Saturday was how one goes about getting interviews in the media. There is no easy answer to that: sometimes you can get attention on radio or in the newspapers (hardly ever television) because you’re a new writer breaking in; sometimes you can be asked your opinion if you have an informed view on a particular issue, and then once you’ve become established enough as an author or illustrator – and you’ve shown any kind of ability to formulate coherent sentences – interviews come up pretty regularly.

The interview on Saturday was the first time I was able to answer questions without being rushed. On radio, you’ve got to keep your answers short and snappy, and television’s even worse. There’s a real skill to that, and I’m only starting to get my head around it. It does help if, like many questions authors get asked, you’ve been asked it a hundred times before.

One good thing about being interviewed for a blog or website is you can have time to answer properly – the kinds of answers people actually want to hear or read.

Every author dreams of producing the kind of book that can maintain its freshness, its sheer entertainment value for fifty years. One such book  is ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, by Harper Lee. Irish Publishing News featured an article from The Guardian last week, discussing the book’s enduring popularity (that’s another phrase authors dream of: enduring popularity).

It is the story of lawyer Atticus Finch’s defence of a black man charged with the rape of a white girl, told through the eyes of his children Scout and Jem. The novel takes its title from Finch’s advice to his children: ‘Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird.’

I only read this book for the first time a few years ago, and I loved it. Its age doesn’t show, and its laid-back tone, homegrown wisdom and easy wit make it a cracking read, while the story holds onto you from beginning to end. This is a great book.

But it is an example of that strange phenomenon of a writer producing one book and then giving up writing – or publishing, at least. On one level, this is something I can understand. Sometimes you have one story to tell and you tell it. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ isn’t claimed to be autobiographical, but does apparently draw a lot from Lee’s childhood.

There are some writers who turn out books all their working lives, but only one, for whatever reason, really seizes the public’s imagination. There is a smaller number, however, who sit down and write one novel, achieve commercial and critical success, and are never heard from again. Harper Lee is one example, and can count herself alongside people like JD Salinger (’Catcher in the Rye’), Anna Sewell (’Black Beauty’), Margaret Mitchell (’Gone with the Wind’) and Emily Bronte (’Wuthering Heights’).

Though in some cases, these people died before they could write another book. Goddamn it.

In some cases, when a writer just gives up, I suppose they’ve been overwhelmed by their success, and either retire from the glare of publicity and everything it brings with it, or can’t replicate the magic of the first book and become disillusioned. This must be an absolute curse for anyone who wants to spend their life writing. In other cases, perhaps the writing of the book has been an experience that brought the author closure, and once completed, they felt they’d achieved what they set out to do.

It’s never really been my ambition to write a classic (although, naturally, I wouldn’t deprive the world of it, if I produced an utter masterpiece). For me it’s always been about living and working as a writer – and illustrator. I like telling stories, and I don’t see this as a job one retires from. I wonder sometimes, what it’s like for someone to still be referred to, discussed and judged, based on one piece of work they might have finished years, even decades, earlier. Is it still something they can take pleasure from, or does it turn sour after a while? Is it a bitter twist on what must have been their dream, or can they still appreciate what they’ve achieved, and savour the pleasure of it? What’s it like, living in the present, knowing you’ll be remembered in the future for something you’ve already left behind you?

According to the article in ‘The Guardian’, fifty years on, Harper Lee’s interests, apart from writing, are: “19th-century literature and 18th-century music, watching politicians and cats, travelling and being alone”.

Sounds like a woman who enjoys her privacy. Happy fiftieth anniversary, Ms Lee, and thanks for the story.

The Wildenstern Saga is being published in France by Mango Jeunesse, translated by Patrick Imbert. They’ve just sent me the cover for ‘Ancient Appetites’, or ‘Voraces’, and I have to say, it’s pretty cool. I saw an earlier version last week and asked for a minor change to the back cover and they actually took that on board, which is unusual. Often, an author doesn’t get any say in the covers of foreign editions.

This is because when you sell the rights into a foreign country, you’re selling a finished product, rather than working closely with a publisher to create a book, as you would do in your own market. The foreign publisher’s task (in this case, Mango), is not just to translate the words that you’ve already edited in your own language. They must also tweak the style of the narrative, the dialogue and the overall look of the book for their, often very different, market.

All that clever wordplay in ‘Asterix’ would not have worked if it was translated slavishly from the French. That took some serious writing ability.

This cover is also an excellent example of how a different publisher, working in a different market can produce a different vision of a book, while still staying true to the essential nature of the thing. As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I’m a big fan of the films of Jeunet et Caro (’Delicatessen’, ‘Amelie,’ ‘The City of Lost Children’) and the front cover definitely has a similar feel about it. Although the velocycle on the back looks more like something you’d see in one of David Cronenberg’s ‘body horror’ films like ‘eXistenZ’ (another director I like).

I’d have very firm views on covers – I’ve had worse arguments with publishers over the designs of my books than I’ve ever had over the text. It goes without saying that the cover’s one of the most important elements in selling a book – it’s often listed as the second most common reason for choosing a book (a recommendation from a friend normally being the first). And I have a very clear idea of how I want my books to look. But I also have to recognize that a style that works in my market, might not work in another country, so there comes a time when you just have to let it go. Even so, I’d hate to see a badly executed design on the cover of one of my books, and so far I’ve been pretty lucky in the designers who’ve plied their trade on my titles. The cover of ‘Voraces’ is no exception.

Mango have already published ‘Small-Minded Giants’ as ‘Liberté Surveillée’. You can check out the cover of that and other foreign editions (there are more in the works) at my Cover Gallery.

It’s a constant refrain of mine that there’s a problem with the way boys read. Girls have their own problems too (and delight in discussing those and many other problems at length). But when it comes to reading across the full range of fiction, lads are bit, well . . . squeamish.

This is a particular problem as boys become interested in girls. In order to go beyond the ogling stage, one needs an understanding of how girls think. Boys, who are, for the most part, quite straightforward in their reasoning and motives, find themselves emotionally confused when faced with the tangle of desires, insecurities, passions and complex motives that is the mind of the teenage girl. Frankly, adolescence is a bewildering experience for both sexes and from the boys’ point of view, it’s all the fault of the fairer and more capricious sex.

Having said that, if teenage boys were completely open about their motives and drives, they’d probably make the girls gag with disgust, send them into peals of laughter or scare them shitless.

But at least lads are easier to understand.

A really, really handy way of understanding the mind of a teenage girl is to read the kinds of books that teenage girls read. Boys may recoil in horror at the thought, but let me say this: Girls talk about everything – and some write it all down. There’s a treasure trove of insight and useful facts – vital intelligence in the war of the sexes – just lying beneath all those pink and glittery, or black and broody covers, just waiting to be exposed. If you want to get off with hot girls, do some research.

And I don’t just mean books that are written by female writers, or books that have a girl on the cover. I mean books that are marketed specifically at girls, and are adorned with covers that boys would run a mile from. The books that are no-holds-barred girlie and proud of it. That’s where you’ll find the useful stuff. Outlandish as it sounds, if you want to get past first base with girls, you have to say the right things to them – and definitely avoid saying the wrong things.

Lads, you’ve got to read some girls’ books. And girls, if you want the types of guys who know the stuff you need them to know, you have to give them the right incentives to read.

So, on that note, there is currently an uninhibitedly pink website asking for you to vote for the Queen of Teen. I’m voting for Sarah Webb because she’s a friend of mine, she’s a great writer with a lively style, and because the Amy Green series is the kind of mine of information that boys need.

And ‘cos she’s Irish, and we need to stand up for our own. Vote for Sarah Webb now!

Much more of this and I’m going to start sounding like a conspiracy nut.

All right, most people would have to admit that the school library fingerprinting kids was a bit creepy. And my piece on Google a while back was not wholly paranoid, given that they have flaunted copyright laws and it has taken numerous countries and one almighty court case to try and get them to behave. So I’m not quite in Jim Corr territory yet.

Yet.

I’ve been asked on a number of occasions why I don’t have a Facebook page. I did briefly have a MySpace page a while back, but gave it up almost immediately for a few reasons. The main reason was the lack of control I had over the content. This might sound odd, coming from someone who has a pretty extensive website and a regular blog, all of which can be read and seen by anyone on the web. I don’t use Twitter, but I wouldn’t rule it out. But on a social networking site, you can choose what level of security you have, and what people can see the content, right?

Here’s what PC World’s website had to say about the privacy settings Facebook was using up until the end of May this year:

‘Achieving maximum privacy on Facebook now requires you to click through 50 settings and more than 170 options. And even that won’t completely safeguard your info. To fully understand Facebook’s updated stance on privacy and your personal data, you’d have to wade through the company’s 5,830-word privacy policy. That, as the astute crew from The New York Times noticed, is 1,287 words longer than the United States Constitution‘

Faced with millions of pissed-off users, Facebook have caved in and apparently made their privacy controls tighter, and more simple to use, but the reviews are still mixed.

To put it plainly, the security measures you might be counting on to keep complete strangers from seeing personal stuff about you or your friends probably isn’t  secure enough. Whatever you do, you are publishing your private life online, and it’s dangerous to assume that you can stick personal stuff up there and keep it hidden from the rest of the world.

In my opinioin, it’s dodgy to put up pictures anywhere of your kids. Where I show my kids on my blog, you can’t see their faces – that’s deliberate. And the site that’s hosting your page may not be telling how it’s using all the handy info you’re posting about the things you like and the things you do and what your friends like and do. Are all those neat little boxes you fill in treated with the same level of privacy, or are some more public than others? The company may not get rid of your information if you close your account, and they may not tell you how long they’ll be hanging on to that personal data.

And information on the web is a bit like a virus. Once it’s out there, there’s no getting it back. You can’t jump back onto the cliff. And all that loose information can start taking different shapes and doing things you – or even the host companies – can’t predict.

On Saturday, the 28th of May, ‘The Irish Times’ ran an article by Karlin Lillington about Google and Facebook. It highlighted the lack of control people have over the personal information they put online. Many people kid themselves (consciously or subconsciously) that they’re a different person on their Facebook page than they are in real life. But there’s still a lot of you there, and I’ve always been very wary of what I do and don’t make available to the public.

It’s simple. You have to assume that anything you put on the web without serious encryption can be nicked. In fact, serious encryption still might not keep your information safe.

By having a website and a blog, rather than a networking site, I’m not fooling myself about what people can and can’t see. This way, I won’t be left with my virtual arse hanging in the breeze when all my embarrassing stories and photos go global. That’s the theory anyway. I could just add the same stuff to a Facebook page, but that’d be another platform to maintain, and I’d have to put up with another inlet for junk, including things like companies that mine the profiles of Facebook users.

You might or might not be aware that Google has cars going around the country, taking photos of streets to put online for their Street View project. They are not asking permission to show you if you appear in any of the photos. Not so bad, really, as this happens on television all the time. What I didn’t know until I read the ‘Irish Times’ article, was that they were also scanning wireless networks:

‘This month Google confirmed it had been collecting data sent over Irish wireless networks – the network name and equipment serial numbers – as part of its Street View process, to see which homes and businesses were using Google Maps on mobiles. The company also confirmed more generally to European data-protection commissioners that it had collected any unprotected data being sent across networks at the time its Street View vehicles were in the area but that this process had ceased and was “a mistake”. All Irish data collected was said to have been destroyed.’

So they’ve got cars going round like TV license inspectors, scanning for signals. If you have a wireless modem, and they drive past, they can pick up on the signal. And they’ve been recording any unencrypted information (such as the bits that identify the signal and the equipment) that they pick up. So . . . paranoid yet?

And in case you think there’s nothing potentially toxic on your networking site, here’s another quote from that article:

‘Consider the case of Stacy Snyder. This 25-year-old American student and mother finished her studies to become a school teacher in 2006 – and then was refused her certificate by university authorities because of behaviour inappropriate for a teacher. That “behaviour” was a picture of herself at a party, dressed as a pirate and holding a plastic cup, which she had uploaded to her MySpace page with the caption “drunken pirate”. Her case went to the courts – which upheld the right of the university to deny her teaching credentials [my emphasis].

‘Many people do not realise that, once posted online, information is almost impossible to obliterate. Many social networks allow a user to cancel their profile – but retain the data in case they want to re-establish them later. As new data goes online, search engines such as Bing and Google permanently archive billions of bits of that information daily.’

This complete disregard for privacy is worrying, but in some ways it’s the way this information is just taken and filed, often to be sold or just passed on, with little or no consideration about the future consequences that’s far more insidious. Above all, it’s just plain careless.  It’s not a New World Order that worries me so much (it does worry me a bit – but I’m not joining the X-Files yet, Jim) – it’s more the idea of a completely disordered world, where information is collected without any real necessity, and stored just because a company can, rather than being driven by any deliberate motives. As users of the web, we have to be more careful with the information we let out there. There are too many companies who want to take it and use it, and sell it or lose it. And you can never tell what’ll be used against you or when.

Companies of this size are enormously powerful, and it’s healthy to be a bit suspicious of anyone with that kind of power. But it’s not a conspiracy I’m most worried about. It’s that, at the heart of all these incredibly complex information gathering systems, there are human beings who are bound to screw up. And  when they do, they could be doing it with some essential piece of me.

This letter has been sent to my local representatives, to the Minister for Education and Skills, to the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.

I am writing to you to protest at the potential loss of an absolutely vital programme for young people, not through cuts but through simple inaction.

The Junior Cert Support Programme is one of those rare projects that has been properly planned, properly implemented and properly monitored, and it has been famously successful in saving thousands of youngsters from early school-leaving and the appalling cultural and economic consequences.

As an author and illustrator, I have visited, and worked, in hundreds of schools and libraries across the country. I have seen firsthand the benefit of having a JCSP library in a school – and the queues of young people waiting to get into them when they open each day. Imagine that – teenagers queuing to get into a library. This is a brilliant programme, one that has helped to make up for Ireland’s woeful cobbled-together system of school libraries. They are a model for a programme that should be rolled out to every secondary school in the country.

A full-time librarian is key to these projects – and I have found every one of them to be competent, enthusiastic and committed individuals. The libraries cannot operate properly without them. They need to be recognized as the front-line staff that they are.

Now, because of a bureaucratic fumble, most of these librarians are facing the completion of their contracts at the end of August. Because of the public services recruitment embargo, their contracts may not be renewed. Without these people, the libraries will be slowly gutted and die a slow death as their resources are absorbed into the normal school system.

The Junior Cert Support Programme is something this government got absolutely right. How many other projects can claim the same? To build a smart economy, we’re going to need a high quality education system. This is no time to be sacking librarians, or closing libraries. Our young people need all the help they can get. Let’s give them everything we can.

Regards,

Oisín McGann.