Ex-offender helps former prisoners to rebuild their lives after doing their time

When Damien Quinn left Castlerea Prison in 2009, after three years locked-up for drugs-related offences, he thought he’d served his time. But the sentence was just beginning.

“Prison is where the punishment takes place but it’s not the hard part,” said the Tuam man.

“The hard part is when you get out and try to rebuild your life and get an opportunity, but you’re kept being told ‘no’ because they have this bit of information from your background that you can’t change,” he added.

He was involved in drugs, criminality and violence from the age of 15 to 23.

Now, aged 38, Damien has turned his life around. And he’s using his experience to help other ex-offenders to get back on track.

With seed funding from Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, he established Spéire Nua.

Based in Athenry, the rehabilitative programme, as the Irish translation of its name suggests, aims to give a ‘new horizon’ to ex-offenders.

It has just received more funding for the project from KickStart for a feasibility study, administered through Pobal, with money from the Dormant Accounts Fund on behalf of Probation and Department of Justice.

Damien got back on the ‘straight and narrow’ after leaving Castlerea, and he is now a Social Enterprise Regeneration Project Coordinator and Community Education and Disability Officer with Galway Rural Development.

But it wasn’t easy, not least because his criminal conviction and past kept following him around.

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