Fel ydych chi'n gweld iawn i mi, ac mae'n reall bod nhw'n gweithiau ddim yn ymddangos y gweithio'n cyd-dweithio i gydag ffyrdd ymlaen nhw. Felly amgylcheddol, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, neu mae'n ei wneud o'r gwybr ymddangos gwirionedd. Felly, o ran oedd ymddangos, rydyn ni'n gyfrifosio i'r ddechrau. Ond ydych yn meddwl, Brynfford Simon, Sean Moyn and Earl Dry. A ydyn nhw'n dechrau ar y bydd yn ymddangos ymddangos y cyd-diwyd y cyd-diwyd yn ymdweithio. Mae'n cyd-diwyd yn cyfreithio cyd-diwyd Cymru yn ymddangos llyfr o gynnwys sy'n cyd-diwyd fe yw'r cyd-diwyd. Mae'n cyfrifosio'r cyd-diwyd yn y wahanol. We often hear about technology and its problems. This is a technology that ensures better social outcomes. I think it's one of the first times that we've taken this theme and very pleased to see you all here, because I know you have a particular interest in it. Just say the house rules at the beginning. If you could turn off your mobile phones I'm sure everybody has done that and to say that this session that you know the talks are on record but the questions and answers are off record just to let you know that. So our first speaker today is Easeult Ward. Everybody's speak for just under 10 minutes and I know they're going to be absolutely perfect speakers and keep to that and we've got a range here of people looking at different issues in the social side, food poverty, issues around access to education and marginalisation in the education system and older people living alone and enabling them and the agencies in which they work would to be in part and also the social innovation fund Ireland that helps facilitate these kind of enterprises. So the first theme we're going to look at is food wastage and I know Easeult will give us a background on that but Easeult and her co-founder Easeult Ward and her co-founder Yvonne O'Brien set this company up in 2013 and in this short period of time is now working in the UK in Dublin, Cork and Galway and has managed true technology to address a social issue where there is a lot of waste and people needing food and enabled that wastage to become a social asset. So Easeult we look forward to your presentation thank you very much. So first I'll tell you a bit about the problem of food waste. Over 30% of all food produced is last year wasted across the global system, food system, that's almost a trillion dollars in economic losses and 8% and is responsible for 8% of our global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country it would be the third largest global greenhouse gas emitter after China and the US and all of this food is going to waste when almost 800 million people around the world don't actually have enough to eat. Even in Ireland we're wasting a million tons of food every year and one in eight people are experiencing food poverty. According to the UN if we could take just 25% of all of the food that's going to waste that would be enough to feed all of the people who are malnourished. So we set a food cloud in 2013 as a social enterprise with a vision for a world where no good food would go to waste. We started off with a very simple solution this was our first ever donation where we connected a farmers market to a local charity and this was I suppose our first peaceful concept we didn't even use technology except for a few phone calls and we basically found a farmers market that at the end of the market on Wednesday and Saturday have really perfectly good food that was going to waste and a local charity Don Bosco Teenage Care that housed up to 10 teenagers who were transferring between foster care and they basically ran it like a home but it was local to the farmers market so we connected the two and said you know could you benefit from this food and would you be interested in donating it and what was incredible for us was the impact that we saw beyond what we had anticipated so of course they were the farmers market was delighted not to have to waste this food that they'd worked so hard to produce and bring to the market and of course the charity were delighted to receive some free food but actually we created an amazing relationship in the local community where all of a sudden a charity in the business are connected and they realise that they have a way to work together which actually solves each other's problems and beyond that again a lot was amazing for the charity was the absolute crazy variety of the food so you can see on the table that it's actually raw milk and very artisan breads and all of things like gourmet sausages so the charity were absolutely delighted because all of these teenagers you've never seen a half of these three products before coming down and reading through them and laughing and swaffing the food together so the community aspect and the bringing people together around food was one of the amazing impacts that we hadn't anticipated and this was actually the first time that we experienced that so we knew that we wanted to do this at scale but we knew that we'd never be able to facilitate donations amongst every food business and charity in Ireland without the use of technology so we developed a very simple solution that basically allows businesses to upload details of their surplus food using a very simple app and a notification is then sent to a charity that's in their local community offering them the food that's available the charity texts back confirms and then collects it directly from the food business what the technology allows us to do here is it basically streamlines the communication between the store and the charity and also and also allows us to track the impact so we can tell the businesses how much food they've donated and the impact they're having in their community and also the charities how much they've saved and how much they've been able to expand their impact because of this new supply of food and so that our first retailer to come on board were quite lucky it happened to be the largest retailer in Ireland, Tesco at the time anyway and since then we've now rolled out our technology nationally with Tesco, Aldi and and for the other retailers that might be missing we're actually at a trial at the moment but it's not 100% official yet and then what was amazing about this is we also realised that although food redistribution had been happening since the 60s and 70s in most developed countries including the establishment of European network food banks global network food banks that we had even though these solutions existed I come at it with quite a unique approach because we decided to start actually with technology so the solution that we developed turned out was under quite a height was valued by other or other countries so the first country now that we've managed to expand into is the UK where fair share have an existing network of food banks 20 warehouses that redistribute surplus food in the traditional way using logistics and warehousing and we've been able to provide them with our technology over the last two years and worked with them to roll it out to all of the Tesco stories and Waitrose stories in the UK and what it's meant for them is that they've grown their impacts and the steady rate over the last 20 years constantly having to invest in more infrastructure to get to the next stage of impact but actually providing them with this platform enabled them to increase their impact rate 25% in one year so it really shows the impact that technology can have when it's introduced to the nonprofit sector and still keeping the traditional way of doing things but actually using technology alongside that to create a step change in the impact that can be had then in 2016 although we had the technology solution scaled out nationally we did know that Ireland also needed the infrastructure to redistribute large quantities surplus food so we launched three warehouses one in Dublin one in Galway and one in Cork and now we can redistribute large quantities of surplus food from further up the food supply chain so pallets of one product that one charity couldn't manage we can store it break it down and distribute it out to our network charity so our impact to date we have over 3,000 supermarkets across the UK and Ireland that are donating to the platform to date and we've just actually hit 29 million meals have been redistributed through the two solutions we've 100 food businesses that are now donating through our homes and over 7,000 charities that are benefiting again across the UK and Ireland from the solution but i was going to give one kind of example of a charity that's benefited care social services are one of the first that came on board with us in Ireland and at the time 2013 the charity sector in general and care were faced with increased demand for their services and also dramatic funding cuts and so they were in quite a difficult position and they saw this as an opportunity to get a free supply of an additional resource essentially in their community so they started collecting food from their local supermarkets they now also collect from our hubs and actually 20 20% of their food is collected from local stores which meant that they were receiving an average value of 3000 euro per week of food that was being donated and they've now been able to increase the number of people they're working with by 100 and actually they've been able to so only first met them they were letting a lot of people they were making a lot of people redundant because of the funding cuts they were dealing with they've actually been able to rehire a lot of those people over the last two or three years now so all in all it's just been an amazing story and it's both for us this is the impact that we've seen the number of meals that have been donated so i suppose for us and the team it's amazing to think that that one great story that we've seen happening with care is now hopefully happening to the houses and charities across the UK and Ireland where they're really seeing the value of this resource which is food in helping them reduce their costs invest in other aspects of their services and actually just bring communities together and people together within their services to really see an amazing impact so we're now redistruding an average of 1.5 million meals every month and we're also working on our own other things so we being the first organisation to redistribute surplus food on a national scale of Ireland we have to work with the food safety authority we're also members of an EU platform on food loss and waste sharing best practice we've worked with the environmental protection agency and i suppose at the point of this is just that because we were doing something that was very new to Ireland it was very important that from the very beginning we engaged with all of the other organisations that could have an impact on this and actually get them to help us move faster and break down a lot of the barriers that we have faced so the future by 2020 we're aiming to be in 6000 supermarkets across the UK and Ireland we talked to double the amount of food businesses that we're working with in Ireland through our homes and reach 38 million meals per year that would be redistributed to 12,000 charity partners and we believe of course that technology can help and support to scale our solutions so one is making it simple to donate in terms of connecting more and more supermarkets with their charities and their local communities and another actually which is relatively new and we started with support of think tech last year is looking to see how we can use the technology to increase the impact that we can have at further up the food supply chain so looking at how technology can really support our homes model so that we can find a way to excellently increase the impact that we can have there and then of course we'd like to share the technology that we've developed that we use ourselves in Ireland that we've licensed into the UK with other organisations internationally and we've actually just started working with a food bank in Australia to see if we could license our technology to them in a much more kind of hands-off model than we have done in the UK so we thought Australia would be a good test considering the distance and time zone differences so we don't really have a choice but to try a hands-off model and so that's it I think we've just hit 10 minutes there so thank you very much so you can ask questions when we finish and what an inspiring story and from food to another area which is really at the centre of our culture you know education everybody feels that access to education is actually critical you know for life chances and if we look at some cohorts it's actually going to be a loan then oh it's going to be a loan oh sorry I have to change that if I could change well Sean Moynihan he doesn't really need an introduction is CEO of a loan and Sean has worked interestingly in the private sector came into the not-for-profit sector working with Simon as director of services and then moved into a loan and the loan as you know has existed for 40 years it's has a very powerful name of looking and working with older people to enable them to live at home and more importantly perhaps to keep them in the community and empower them but through technology now a loan and through the work of Sean and his colleagues they've enabled to an integrated technology structure to enhance people's quality of life to enhance their control of their own lives in a way perhaps that in a way that is able to talk about food you're talking about people living in a community and I think there's another aspect to your work and I think you're going to talk about not only you're talking about empowering people living in their home but empowering agencies local communities to work together not only in a partnership way but in a collaborative way as well so Sean thank you very much that's probably a better job than I'll do do you know it's really nice I'm off home so isn't appreciated and it's great to be here today and so just I suppose that's what we do alone we support older people at home and funny enough is is you know NGOs are meant to work to eliminate themselves in some ways and when I came into a loan they were actually considering winding up they were down to two staff around 40 volunteers and so we discussed it for a while and we talked about investment and we do this and do that and Lehman Brothers went bust the next week and all the money that we planned for all disappeared fairly rapidly but anyway so that we started from the bottom so I suppose the funny thing about even the cover slide there is putting down logos around quality and trust NGOs we work you know we work with people and we need the trust of those people we need the trust of the people who donate to us we need the trust of the government but we also know people to know that we're outcome focused we're there to do a job we're set up we provide housing we're there to provide more housing where we provide technology we're there to provide more technology and where we're there to support all the people at home it's what it's to support as many as possible and people need to realise that that we do that to the best of our ability and it will be held accountable for I suppose so what are we doing we have an aging demographic right and so ultimately we get around depending on whose figures you go with and what age you get over 65s we get around 26 to 27 000 extra over 65s every year we're on a journey from half a million to a million and a half it's a great thing people are living longer we need to celebrate that but naturally with that type of huge shift it crosses problems current systems won't hold right and on top of that is the percentage people end up struggling and an awful lot of older people live on the basic basic basic air the basic pension the basic income and that can cause problems especially as you get less able less mobile or maybe around your own okay we fragmented communities the advent of the internet the way we work the way we operate there's less businesses in our communities there's less people in communities and not only informal supports for older people aren't there I was with one of our services and don't you go there the other day and a woman who just got a befender for her father and now and staff support for her father and now because her husband was going to Dublin every week to to work she had two young children and her father involved was 20 minutes away in the car and he was starting to develop dementia so that's what people are trying to struggle with and cope with every now says people want to do the right things but we have to enable them to do that okay so the other thing is is that is a map of places and people we support up and down the country are we operate but really the thing we is is models and scale everywhere we go if you go things people will talk about and there's lots of agencies in homelessness there's lots of agencies in older people services but what we need is models so everybody is a consistent practice of what we're doing and that these models are scalable so when you've got something that's going to go from half a million to a million and a half you really need to have a structure and a model that's going to respond to that rather than a fragmented approach so a lot of what we do is a bit the formation of our sector so what we do on a daily basis and staff do is is and we befriend information and supports isolation and loneliness and we're running a smart we're running a task force at the moment with across all the age groups loneliness affects younger people as well mental health charities cross the political divide to try and get it put as a public health issues because it will shorten your life right so your mental and physical health so we're working on that but every day what we do is is we've gone across the country and by county council area by county and health care area we've calculated the percentage of older people isolation and loneliness using till the study is trinity numbers etc and then for coordination and support we've done the same thing people need go in work with an individual empower the old person what are the blockages to aging a home and then we work to eliminate with them by leveraging everything that's in the community and using all the different services or different government departments because unfortunately people live in a world you're not all about health transport legal problems physical problems housing problems if all these things have to be support people and third thing we do is housing with support and again we're running another campaign at the moment about the housing needs for older people we want all the families and children to have housing but in an aging demographic the numbers behind that house ownership falls we have a very large percentage of older people entering retirement in private rented the campaign at the moment is how do you pay the rent when you retire now and unfortunately if you were in a partnership and somebody passed away you lose all that emotional support but you could also lose half your income so again how are we going to pay the rent and there is no plan at the moment so we're again stimulating debate we're very much a campaigning organisation but we tried to do it on evidence practice on people rather than having you know giving out to people giving people lists things to do and telling them you're right and they're wrong really never changed anything do you know what I mean it's all about working public service, HSE all the different departments are full of good people doing the best they can NGOs can help them break out and also break out because we can operate across whole of government and whole of geographical areas and the third thing we do is be connect which is where our technology sits within that so when we work out the demand and we work out what we're going to do we realise my god this is a huge task how are we going to resource others so we provide technology resources and training to other agencies I'm just going to run if this works is it no is it yeah this is Brenda who's running his own digital hold open kill barric into sound works it's going to the other okay I can skip to her well I suppose that sometimes we wait till we get a picture before we cut them out we read some of that listen I move on because it's hard for people I suppose the aim there is is to bring it back to the individual and tells us of Brenda's Brenda's life journey is an insane way but we're using it to help him even though he's chair bound to remain living in his own home right so our technology shall we say around that is what we have is is we've managed information systems so what we've done is all assessments purchases all the management systems you need governance is all computerised so what happens is is we then know somebody goes in season individual and then we get a support plan plan for them the main thing then is is we've apps for friends families and our staff so when people are either volunteers are visiting or family is there we can get information back on how the person is to be well up is where we provide older people with tablets and they can monitor their own health and they can also monitor their social groups and we load up things of interest to them do you know which find and I suppose we're trying to break down the stereotype that older people aren't interested in technology right and mobile phones over 20 years old so if you know if you were 45 when it came out you're 65 now which you know to me like it's moved on plus what you find is is people embrace it because it's something new they know it's something that they haven't really got access to and they go to it so if people come in and kind of get the GA resource can I do this can I do that but also you're trying to empower one of the first people who got that tablets because part of the tracking was is where they're going outside their house how active where they were and they realised for themselves is I'm not leaving my house I'm not going anywhere I'm not seeing anybody and ultimately put sport them take on so then you have the the organisation the family the friends the older person and then be home is assistive technology in the home in the home so what we now have is a platform rather than us designing all different types of software so somebody comes out with a very very good app that maybe is around monitoring COPD or monitoring something around your blood pressure right now says we can just load it up so ultimately we can keep going with everybody connected and the older people owns the data so what's going on they can forward the friends family to us or to their GP and then and what that then also gives us is e-health we can plug into the e-health and as and there's a pro actor there's a 2020 projects where they're trying to link all the different hospitals and all the medical our hope long term is is that what we have in the community somebody ends up in an emergency department all this information will be available so we people will know what's going on the other thing is is it gives us all the data of what's happening so I know for the last 1400 people we worked with between 70 and 90 actually housing issues with the second highest which even though a lot of these people own their own houses you know and every now so you start building up the data for planning what's going on and for designing your services and then if that's our service then what you do is is we add that in and give it to our agencies and the first 10 agencies are already on it which means that you have 10 agencies go back to models if 10 agencies operate into the same standards to the same quality standards building up to producing the same data sort of great thing is is we've also got 10 agencies learning from each other and I'm working together and partnering and not competing and you know there's one of those agencies we work with and they're based in Dundar or sorry in Dreda and we've we've split the spots in Dreda in Dundar because it happens and and in Meade and so what we do is is everything that comes to us from Dundar we now go to them and voice it very soon so again it's all some of the capacity problems of what you're doing so in the assistive technology stuff this is the base package we've started putting into people's homes and we've pilot with Dublin City Council they're in it's in our housing and we're talking to a few of the AHBs about it so what happens is is you get to be well you get the tablet you get the tablet you've got things like door sensors presence sensors monitoring temperature temperature is a good one just using it so if you imagine so this is solving social problems and things that and so if you take temperature you've just come out of a big cold snap right excess winter deaths is a dreadful thing but over 300 people 300 over 65 is every year done in Ireland because of the cold right because they get pneumonia and get things and older people tend to live in the older houses we'll know if the heat is on do you know very simple prompt it's really cold down there you wouldn't think it's switching heat now do you know what I mean so like things like that the the pebble that pendant lamb is the next thing is that's a fall sensor if you fall if you fall and break your hip and you're over 70 or 77 times more likely to die within a year right it's a fall sensor we'll know how much of the impact is it's got geo mapping so somebody was starting to get a touch of dementia for forgetfulness you could put a ring fence round of a half a mile around the house and then get them with their permission and if they go outside that go to somebody's mobile phone and you know where the person or the individual is so we we we can support people there at your home long time for you that is is as we were in the dark yesterday at the european eco health ecosystem is is how do we then personalize that somebody comes home and they're for prevalence to fall somebody else comes home and they've got other issues we can start putting different technologies in depending and if people go back to a baseline we can switch it off you know like we can switch things on and off you know so that's it because there's obviously GDPR and we have to we have to be compliant with all that our vision for the next few years i mentioned 100 agencies on the one on the one platform for us it's a journey probably to around 9 000 volunteers that's 9 000 reimagining the community that has changed 9 000 people visiting every week supporting their older people and then another the balance of that coming through other agencies that we work in partnership like the one i mentioned in drought drought then what we do is is that'll be 36 000 people that will create a network that we can then help scale other agencies so if you take housing was the second issue we don't do repairs now we get other people to do them so we will work out the demand and try and get somebody else to scale to do that and so ultimately you're moving into a situation that you're helping your whole sector to respond on the housing which part huge thing we're going to be 6 000 that's a stat serum search right and we're going to be 6 000 nursing home space is short see hse figures we're in by 2022 right so we need alternative models you're up so things like housing with support and we're looking for private funding on that we want to produce a private model of where we'll produce housing with support as an alternative to to to to nursing home so as you can see the impact we're trying to get is the older person relatives friends families volunteers other NGOs and and the state and the state so we can bring a huge where we've a huge change in demographics that we can actually respond as a unit it's been government policy the first book on it in 68 and since 88 there's been a tome written about the way forward that older people should should should age at home what we have to do is make that possible because it takes a whole government approach and what NGOs can do is is we can build the infrastructure in the community that are all whether it's transport whether it's communication whether all the different departments can actually work with and we can make these types of things possible john i thank you john is efficient for the future um and perhaps we can come back to that again um and now we're we're going to look with with brian for assignments brian's a very interesting background he's worked in education and management but it was also a a um social entrepreneur himself and that he established reimagined cork back in 2014 but then joined ice skull and it is interesting to know the figures and i think data is important to this over 3000 young people between the ages of 13 and 16 uh drop out of school every year it's it's a big number it may seem small but it is a big number and they drop out for a whole variety of reasons that they don't you know get any qualifications and they're lost to the system but ice skull have developed a method uh of encouraging and bringing young people back into the education system using online platforms and working also of course with community as well but the the key thing there is that they bring people back uh into learning accredit them and enable them to progress and we all know of all things education really dictates our life's chances so i think ice skull is another really extraordinary organisation that has been set up since 2007 and has been working with this cohort of young people working again in partnership with twosla you know youth groups the gardy and local resource centres so brian would look forward to hearing your presentation okay hi everyone um yeah so uh ice skull uh moving on to how technology helps in the education sector so um i think if we all imagine or if we all think of somebody who we know who's an early schooliever we probably struggle but maybe some of you are thinking of this guy uh and unfortunately he's not the norm the reality of early school even is more so the bottom two images there a higher risk of mental health issues have been involved in the criminal justice system and we know as joy said 3,300 young people leave school every year under the age of 16 and there's significant consequences to that so for the individual they're four times more likely to be unemployed they're six times more likely to be in poverty and as i mentioned they're more at risk around drug alcohol misuse and ill health the social impact we know that over 50% of the prison population leave school before the age of 15 so that has significant consequences on the economy not only the prison price prison places but also lost revenue and of course impact of that drug alcohol misuse as well so a little bit about ice skull so um like joy said we're we're an online learning service out of school we work with 13 to 16 year olds they get referred into our program they come in very often with behavioral issues as a reason for them not being able to maintain a mainstream with mental health issues or for disaffection we we work closely with education welfare service and they are the statutory body that has responsibility for young people being in school under the age of 16 so they refer the young people in the qualification that the young people can achieve is qqi level 3 which is the equivalent of their junior cert and they log in from two ice skull in either one of two locations so roughly half our students log in from their homes and then the other half log in from blended centres and in the blended centres we have partnerships with a range of different agencies and services a little bit like alone in different communities around Ireland who host the the the centre young people come in attend at set days and not only do they do the the ice skull program in terms of their education but the informal education around their needs are are are responded to by maybe crime prevention program counselling family support and so it's a holistic approach so there's a few snaps from one of our blended centres in Longford you'll see the bottom right picture that's two of the lads working away on ice skull and then in the middle we have a support worker mark who's who's helping them on so when the students are online each of them are allocated an individual mentor and that mentor builds a learning plan for them every single day and it's updated every day they're online and behind the mentor is a group of tutors so for every course ice skull have we have tutors that design the content correct the work give feedback to students um the nice thing about the blended learning model as well is they can use activities that they do in their local youth services and centres to become accredited to so the two other pictures you're looking at there there was accreditation for personal effectiveness like QQI level three around a healthy eating project and a football tournament as well so a little bit more about technology and how we use it well what it does is it enables students to become self directed the young people that we work with they're out of school for at least six months in many cases they've had a really negative experience and education in the past so we start to work with them and ask them to choose the pace that they work at and what do they think will challenge them we create weekly plans and term goals for each individual student we're extremely flexible like that um students are coming with a range of issues and we need to be to be able to respond to them um as as much as we can we offer personalized learning so um students can work at their own pace they can work around content that they're individually interested in as well and all the time they're online there's synchronous support so we're open from monday to friday nine to five and there's always an adult tutor mentor or one of our central team online if they need to ask a question or have a live call there's the example of our live call there we've shown he's actually one of our student mentors and he's based in barcelona so in terms of technology as well so when we get the referral in from education welfare service we start to develop a picture and we have a thing called a student profile that we developed so we get an idea of a student's motivation we start to get an understanding and a capture on their emotional well-being and their strengths and their weaknesses and where they work well and where they don't work well we have information on their learning environment and how supportive it is whether it's an incentive or home we look at their learning needs so their literacy numeracy ict and then also we look at their behavior and how they communicate with others and we set challenges and goals based on all of that information and that's how the learning plan is built for these young people every day so it's very much technology allows us to put young people at the centre of what we do so you'll see that there's a range of our courses and again it's not a case of everyone on iSchool has to do say the QQI personal effectiveness course it's the case that the personal effectiveness course can be completed in the team of animal care it can be completed in the team of health and nutrition or sport so it's very much tapping into the interests of young people and it really works interest-led learning is really powerful for those young people who are out of school and have had negative experiences in the past. Here's a small snapshot of technology on our maths course so it's very simple but everyone's trying to get to complete in education parlance the SLOs the learning outcomes that gets them to achieve the QQI accreditation at level three for some students they can go there quite quickly and they can go through the kind of advanced course but what technology allows us to do is offer it at a number of different levels so once we find out what level the student is at we can pitch the content around where they're at and maybe take them around a longer route but they'll still get to the same outcome in the end we offer students multiple modes of submission so in terms of assessment it's not just text space at the bottom they can record audio if they wish they can record video which is digital media video one of our students in the middle there or they can make posters and all of these will fit the QQI portfolio assessment. In terms of data so I mentioned our student profile and how we build learning plans for students the second phase on in terms of how we deal with data is we observe them online and we see where their strengths are and see where their weaknesses are we see what content they're having trouble with and like that the mentor every day is able to build a learning plan based on that particular need and where they're at and then in terms of level three and I think probably as an organisation we're only moving towards level three at this stage it's more of a macro analysis of all our students together now I drew down this chart there a couple of days ago and it's just a a list of the number of tasks that students have done online since January this year and on its own it doesn't tell us much but what it allows us to do and the technology at the back end of our programme allows us to do is we can break down a student course for example and within that course all the tasks that students are asked to do and we can see where there's stumbling blocks where students are taking a longer time and we can also break it down into maybe the referral reasons so young people with anxiety or young people with behavioural reasons or young people in a home setting and we're able to respond and when we look at this macro analysis we're able to improve the programme redesign the content and develop it based on that information so our vision and aim we want every young person to have access to an innovative and flexible model of education it's quite simple really we engage young people in learning it's a very positive programme we look to build their confidence and their self-esteem we provide accreditation opportunities and we also support progression so a big part of the programme is when the student is online it's working with them around what their progression goal is so do they see themselves returning to school is it a training centre a youth reach or a different form of education and we work to build up their confidence and to support them to achieve that goal in terms of our impact so at the moment we work with 55 to 60 students per year um from the last 10 11 years that we've been um we've been operating we have 74 per cent progress back to education so if you're thinking that these young people are coming to us and they're out of school they're out of mainstream for at least six months very often one years or two years yet 74 percent of them progress on to further education and training and we have an 82 success rate of them achieving QQI certification um in terms of our demand we get a lot of requests for service so at the moment we have resources to partner with 12 blended centres we've got a lot of phone calls in uh looking for youth services centres guardian diversion projects resource centres to host ice gold because they're identifying a need in their own community where young people are maybe hanging around they're clearly out of school at the moment we're working towards a model of scale um we've worked very closely with think tech and we can show significant economies of scale so if we're working with 300 students the impact will mean a 60 cost reduction on how it the cost for us to be able to host that student and support them um so that's part of our roadmap for scale and technology and our growth plan unfortunately at the moment we can only accept less than 50 percent of suitable referrals that we get in um so there's a clear need there there's clear evidence that it works but we're very positive about moving in the right direction and get gaining funding for sustainability as well um I spoke a little bit about core aims and objectives I won't go into too much detail but I mean we're really interested in informing future practice and policy um in research and being able to design and and stay with best practice across education not only in Ireland in education technology but across Europe and the world as well um finish with some stories so uh from the second from left is a girl called Georgina she's from Balnacara West and she's a traveler girl she was the first young person in her family to ever achieve formal accreditation and that's her parents on the left and then the support workers who are in the center um in a school completion program in the community down in in Limerick um that's Mark he's there with his family again this is him getting his full award at level three in Mullan Gar mark went on to do a level four in Sheffing and he's now working at one of the local hotels in the area and these boys here uh the the two lads on the right uh they were referred into iSchool and they started and they did a terrible start they didn't want to engage at all they weren't showing up to their center we found out after a few weeks that they were down in the field looking after their horses so we were suddenly able to design a program based around horse care um they both started to come in their attendance approved and they both got their qqi in personal effectiveness within working within around the team of horses and horse care the guy on the left i'd never met him in my life he just jumped into the picture he saw that there was an opportunity he ran upstairs and got a cert he had from the same center it's a guard the introversion project in kings island in Limerick good entrepreneur these are our lads in um in langford uh so that the two uh men on the on the sides of the group are the two support workers who who work with the lads every day and then the three lads with the certs got their full awards last year in in langford um there's laura uh you'll see laura on the left i think it's about 15 in that picture she's working on a digital media project laura on the right it's the same laura uh she came back um to collect an award with siffy in the education fund there a few months back and she's now studying in university and we've a plethora of these stories of young people going on to further education the difference the program made in their lives um i would save them in a lot of ways so it's very nice to hear them that's a young man called daniel on the left there um and a little bit like laura he came back and uh he told his story there a few months back i don't know if we can if we've time to play that do we or yes of course here i think if the sound works i don't know and that's it it's not working that's okay it's on our website if anyone would like to please thanks very much thank you another inspirational story of what can be done to transform people's lives using technology in what often would have been called hopeless cases effectively you know so it's very inspiring and um we have to say you know why it's all right here well oh is the gel behind all the projects uh from the social innovation fund in fact it is it was um own who is the entrepreneur the reimagined call uh a social entrepreneur himself um an engineer by profession worked in ireland and sydney and traveled but has was the person who actually set up the tech tink tech and was which was the first innovator or accelerator for these projects so perhaps you tell us a little bit about that and what the possibilities are maybe for other people here or for groups that are associated with us thanks very much your own interest um i might just start with a couple of questions i mean we've heard from three amazing organizations that are doing some fantastic things and using technology as that enabler for better social outcomes but i just find myself asking well why aren't we doing it more when we look at the amazing technology industry that we have in Dublin so we've got all this capital sloshing around and we've got amazing people and amazing knowledge and that's working really really well in that innovation space why aren't we doing that for social issues it seems logical that if it's um just sitting right there pick up the model and do more of it to solve our social issues and i think that's the premise behind um social innovation fund ireland we're trying to solve that why we're trying to solve um and provide more supports for the amazing people that have just spoken here so i might just go back a step and talk a bit about social innovation fund ireland and then we might finish with think tech but i just want to ask everyone that question and if we have the parts of that ecosystem why isn't it coming together a bit more what can we do more of to support the likes of shawn and brian and izzles and all the other brian and izzles that are out there to solve issues with technology and in a more coherent way and that we fully understand and know that there is a roadmap there to solving social issues a lot quicker so part of who we are that's deardra mortell our ceo in the top right hand corner um we were actually created by the Irish government back in 2013 as a response to the closing down or imminent closing down of two large foundations one of which it was the land to philanthropies and the second one of which deardra was the ceo which is the one foundation so where was that capital going to come from and what the Irish government did was they set up social innovation fund ireland to do that to actually support innovation to solve social issues and to actually try and access corporates and high net worth individuals to work in tandem with the government to create large investment funds that supported the likes of izzles and along we personally believe that technology can be that key neighbour so it doesn't it's not the only thing that needs to be present you obviously need the amazing people as well but it can accelerate the process we've all seen it happen um in the other sector why can't we do it in the social sector as well so how do we actually do that so what what the government did was they looked around internationally and they they found a model that incentivised corporates incentivised high net worth individuals to say work with us and they created what was called a one to one match fund so for every euro that you gave it was matched one to one by the government and it created what we call funds and the funds allowed us to either focus on social issue or focus across multiple issues in this case with think tech where technology was at the core of every solution that we went to look for and then what we do when we receive the money and we create the fund is that we go out and we find those best ideas so think tech was a first of its kind for good we didn't actually know what was there it was very much testing the waters to see well are the ideas out there that we can take in house that we can provide cash and we can provide the supports and I'll speak a bit more about the supports so that they're accelerating that amazing idea that they have scaling it across Ireland and maximising their impact we have an amazing opportunity in Ireland and I've heard this spoken about a number of times we have this critical mass it's the perfect testbed for trying out ideas some of them might fail and that's absolutely fine but some of them that work can scale very quickly across Ireland and there's amazing opportunities for us to provide exemplar ideas to work all the way across the globe and I think Foucladir a great example of that is spoke about being in the UK and other countries that are of interest as well so that is our modus operandi we are looking for those ideas that we can support with cash with the supports and also allow it to facilitate them essentially to scale across Ireland first and foremost to maximise their impact but hopefully go on to replicating those ideas across the world so we heard the guys speak about think tech what is it well it was Ireland's first one million euro tech for good fund the reason that it happened was that google.org and google Ireland said we believe that technology can be anabler we believe that it can solve social issues we've seen it we've seen it work we've seen it work in san francisco why isn't it happening in Dublin you've got this amazing technology industry why aren't we doing more of it so they really led the way and said right here's 500 000 euros guys and the Irish government said great let's create a match fund if we had our first one million euro fund and what it allowed us to do as I spoke about was go out and see and test to see if the ideas were there and the guys to my right here were the proud recipients of 227 000 euros in an award and that was made up of like I say the cash grant because the technology you've got to invest in it to make sure that it works and then the supports was the next piece that we bring so we're kind of bringing a venture capital approach it's what we call venture philanthropy so we don't just give money we actually give money with performance milestones attached to that money and how do we ensure that the money goes as far as possible well we we develop a supports budget so money is set aside to support you on to go take time out of the malaise of the day today of the alone office and actually think about where do we want to be in 2022 if we've got this amazing technology solution what can it actually do you need time and space to do that we have mentoring supports we had an accelerator over six months where we all came together every month and we worked across multiple different fields such as pitching and and and growth support and organizational support all with the same goal of trying to set these guys up for when they leave the accelerator their accelerating scale to Ireland and beyond so look that all that writing is it's probably a bit too small to to to see but essentially it what i what we're trying to articulate there is these guys spent 2017 building technology and they sent they spent 2017 actually taking a step back and thinking about their organization what they needed to change and how they could use the technology as facilitative transformation and already in 2017 islton and and sean touched on the fact that they they've they've been able to accelerate their impacts so previously they were doing x 100 000 meals a month it's now that that's now gone well up in in number sean spoke about 1.5 million people i think in the next by 2022 there's going to be over 100 000 people that will be suitable for assistive technologies you guys are aiming to to actually be facilitated for a third of that i mean that's huge that means that these people are actually empowered at home they don't feel as lonely they feel that they can actually take ownership of their lives and they're not calling the gp are going straight into hospital there's massive impacts there so supporting them to to actually understand what that is and actually look ahead to the five years but the next challenge is well where do they go from from here so how do we support these organizations and other organizations that are out there to take the next step because as i said a vibrant ecosystem takes three things it takes that capital it takes the people it takes the knowledge at the moment things are happening around the edges but it's not interconnected and these guys need support to move it on to the next stage because what they have achieved in such a short period of time is absolutely amazing what they could achieve is is is mind bogging but we have to take that brave step in order to do it so what we believe is that think tech was it proved the pipeline and i believe it proved the model so why don't we do more of it we need the capital so the model is there the capital we need the next google to step up and say do you know what there's there's three amazing organizations here we want to support them we want to take think tech out of Dublin we want to go down to Cork we want to go to Galway wherever we want to be able to stand up in 2020 2020 our own vision to be able to stand up in on the west coast and and invite all the global leaders and be able to say here's what we did in three and four years here are the exemplars that are using technology to enable social change come to us Ireland can be that world-class system ecosystem that supports the facilitation of this of social issues and technology but it needs everyone so the match fund is there the government have kind of dangled the carrot it needs the multinationals it needs the corporates it needs high net worth individuals to be able to say we're going to come on the journey with you um yeah i mean i hope that kind of facilitates hopefully some of the questions and answers that we have but they were they were fantastic organizations to work with they've done amazing work they're going to do more everyone should jump on the train thanks very much


Well, thank you first of all and thank you for inviting me for an opportunity to speak to you I'm going to start out by first of all telling you very humbly. I'm only going to speak about the US I don't pretend to know things Speak about things that I don't know as much about it or Europe or so forth I do congratulate Ireland though. I understand that you celebrated a little bit earlier today on some very important economic events that were After many years of adjustment We're able to finally bring to a close and then a sense. That's what I'm going to speak about in terms of the United States and my issues with The issue of structure I should say It is important in the US and I know it's important globally But I think it's extremely important that we not Think we have everything solved when we've made certain changes and things are settling out When fundamental structural issues remain and that's really the theme that I'm going to talk about here It is a fact That in the United States is elsewhere But over several years preceding the economic crisis the US financial Safety net of deposit insurance that was in place then Federal Reserve lending and Treasury direct investment was expanded To include activities far beyond the core business of commercial banking The effect was to erode the very economic stability being sought by these tools More disturbing however is that the weakened financial structure and The crisis that followed these changes made it necessary for policy makers during a crisis to do whatever it takes To stabilize a system on the brink of collapse Within the boundaries of the safety net the government provided enormous amounts of money and guarantees and Arranged and finance numerous mergers and buyouts in the United States in its effort to save a struggling industry and a global economy It is no coincidence therefore that these events coincided with the evolution of an industry that is far more concentrated now or complex now and Government-dependent that at any time in recent history in 1990 for example the five largest US financial holding companies Controlled only 20% of the total industry assets Today that number is 55% and will likely increase and I know it is larger in Europe than that Ironically these events also have left the US economy increasingly vulnerable to the industry's mistakes For example the single largest financial holding company in the US Using international accounting standards now holds more than four trillion dollars of assets Which is the equivalent of 25% of our GDP The eight largest US global Systemically important banks or g-sibs hold in tandem nearly 15 trillion dollars of assets or the equivalent of 90% of our GDP Thus whether resolved under a bankruptcy or otherwise Problem institutions of this influence will have a systemic consequence and affect far more stock stakeholders than simply the firms and Their shareholders and their creditors The ability of ever more concentrated and complex financial firms to conduct a broad array of activities while the government Backstops their mistakes remains therefore a generous subsidy in the US Over time it most certainly undermines market discipline Distorts firm behavior and in the long term slows economic growth It protects some creditors and creates a moral hazard problem within the financial markets And it bestows a competitive advantage to one segment of the financial industry over another Thus the benefits that the economy might receive from subsidizing this banking structure are often outweighed by the negative effects That eventually are borne by other sectors of the economy and the public So it's with this in mind that I will briefly review some of the principal benefits That I think would likely throw from to a host of stakeholders If the safety net was scaled back in the United States and the structure of banking industry was rationalized around essential core functions So how would I do it very quickly? I Would begin by briefly defining this first commercial banking organizations that are afforded access to the safety net Would only be permitted to conduct the following types of activities commercial banking Which is the intermediation of short-term deposits to assets? Certain securities underwriting and advisory services asset wealth management other underwriting Market making broker dealer activities would be conducted outside the firm That hold a commercial banking charter and thus outside the safety net Second the so-called shadow banking system in the United States and It's use of bank-like funding to intermediate long-term assets would be reformed and subject to far greater market discipline itself So the proposal which is actually on the internet at the FDIC Recognizes that recent and proposed regulatory action such as the vocal rule Serve to lessen the moral hazard issues and the misaligned incentives that contributed to the recent financial crisis However while useful they do not fully separate the host of trading and market-making activities of broker dealers from the bank holding company and The overarching benefit of the safety net that flows to that The fundamental restructure I proposed would more fully address this problem It was separate complex financial firms along business lines and into separate corporate entities where directors have clear missions That are not confused It would unequivocally preclude bank holding companies from engaging in activities that are distorted when they receive Such subsidy coverage and would impede the use of excess leverage and the funding of such activities over time So in the end separating commercial banks and broker dealers would benefit all parties affected by the conduct of complex firms including the public the broader banking and financial industry institutional borrowers and The very firms that were at the center of the crisis While any reform involves trade-offs the benefits of subjecting a highly subsidized and artificially created system of complex firms To the forces of the market and away from government dependency. I think deserves a healthy discussion So let me let me just describe how I think the benefit would fall to each of the groups And I'm going to start with the finance with the financial conglomerates themselves the largest There is I think increasing evidence that the largest most complex firms would benefit from a structural changes outlined above These conglomerates control assets in the trillions of dollars as I noted and involve structures that include thousands of subsidiaries complex and varied activities with significant risk and hundreds of thousands of people firms with these characteristics Inevitably suffer serious financial setbacks as their leadership cannot manage their culture and because individuals within firm To easily circumvent overly complex and centralized control systems Managing them requires enormous amounts of information knowledge and skills to test any CEO's capacity to do so The constant drumbeat of scandal and mediocre performance of the past half decade Suggests that some financial firms have reached that point where they are too large and complicated to be led successfully Management this this economies appear to be overwhelming the economies of scope and scale Unfortunately in an environment in which the safety net protects these firms from outright failure There is limited outside discipline or other mechanisms to right-size the firms and as a result market inefficiencies multiply So confining the safety net and statutorily separating activities along business lines would make the largest financial conglomerates more manageable It will enhance the market row and discipline behavior It would require simpler and more reliable control systems and should management fail on its job The firms could be resolved more successfully No firm can survive incompetent management. However, those firms where a competent CEO It is his or her span of control is consistent with the demands of the day are far more likely to achieve consistent performance over time The market in its pricing of these firms also seem to be signaling this conclusion Some of the largest banks have earned poorly over the past decade as they have dealt with the host of asset and performance problems Some of the largest most complex firms are trading at a discount from book value Suggesting that the market is not confident in their future performance Market analysts are publishing reports suggesting the value of some of these companies would be greater if they were broken up Should the performance of these largest firms continue to show Substantive results Market pressure to simplify their structure will almost certainly increase as we're witnessing in the United States at least There is of course strong disagreement with this view from those managing these largest firms Understandably, but nevertheless their firms performance through the crisis and its aftermath and their reliance on the safety net raised Legitimate questions as to the role of such conglomerates in the future What about the industrial companies that they sub that they lend to or that rely on them? It is argued often The large industrial companies require large highly complex financial firms to meet their global credit needs Having single banking firm as its resource and its resources immediately available to meet global payments and credit requirements Is an invaluable resource it is said at least This argument continues that financial conglomerates also serve the role of counterparting for hedging transactions or interest swaps to assure Reliable cash flows to industrial companies However, the chart titled consolidation of the credit channel, which I have in your hand in your handout Shows how overstated the story is In 1984 the aggregate distribution of assets among four size groups of US banks ranging from less than a billion dollars To more than a hundred billion dollars was nearly equally aligned Some differences, but much closer than People realized this changed dramatically over the next three decades to where the overwhelming control of resources now lies with the fewest megabanks To suggest that this redistribution of assets among domestic Financial firms has served a greater international competitive purpose or enhanced individual economic interest is to deny the events of the last five years in my opinion and Private many of the CEOs of these industrial companies indicate that they do not want to be dependent on a single banking firm for all their Financing needs They are aware that during the crisis credit lines were too often polled without regard to the need or length of the credit relationship in The United States the Alliance for American manufacturing has noted that commercial and industrial loans declined from 1.6 trillion in 2008 to 1.2 trillion in 2011 and it suggests that this represents not only a decline in demand But also a significant decline in the supply of credit And reporting this figure the Alliance added that before the advent of the conglomerate financial firms and their control of such vast resources Capital markets were the servants of manufacturing companies Whereas today they are the masters The fact that one industry is so widely expressing its frustration. I think is worth taking note of Economic theory and practice Suggested institutional borrowers and businesses benefit from a highly competitive market For decades in the United States at least a decentralized commercial banking system provided payment services and Individual or syndicated credit services to industrial companies with vast global operations Investment banks successfully provided to these same firms underwriting and market-making services Engaged in trading activities all without the safety net subsidizing their operations by the way These activities were also conducted with far fewer conflicts of interest than witnessed since the merging of commercial banking and broker dealer activities inside the safety net in the United States beginning at the in the 90s Given the experience and market evidence following from the most recent crisis There is a strong case that the business and institutional client would benefit from a less subsidized and more competitive More specialized more market-driven structure than that which brought forward the Great Recession Let me talk about the independent broker dealers and enhanced competition that I'm talking about We are also often told that it was not the largest banks that caused the crisis in the United States But broker dealers or monoline firms In my opinion such a statement ignores a great deal about commercial bank activities leading up to that crisis in 1999 with the passage of what was known as the Graham leach Bliley Act in the United States Commercial banks were formally permitted to expand into activities traditionally conducted by broker dealers And they're able to do so without having to relinquish any of their access to the public safety net This provided them a significant competitive advantage That cannot be overstated US broker dealers could not successfully compete with complex banks that due to the safety net had almost Unlimited access to low-cost funds and the ability to rely on extreme leverage to expand their balance sheets Knowing this investment houses opposed repeal of the gliss of the so-called Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial banking from investment broker dealer Activities when it was first discussed. They were adamantly opposed Now partly because they knew what would happen as a result However, once the bill once they were merged under the law And it was enacted the competitive advantage that the safety net offered were so significant that firms outside the safety net Were compelled to give with get within it to survive They gained access either by merging into a commercial bank or by increasing their risk profile using more volatile funding and increased leverage just as the commercial banks and They began to get what was known as an implied safety net too big to fail firms like Bear Stearns Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers Chose the latter option in their ultimately failed effort to stay relevant They issued significant amounts of short-term liabilities such as repose the fund longer-term assets and Because financial regulations were changed to enable them to access short-term sources of funds They became commercial banks in practice Leveraging their balance sheets and intermediating short-term liabilities and longer-term assets Given these structural changes, it should surprise no one that when the crisis occurred It was necessary also to bail out these firms greatly expanding the explicit Use of the government safety net so it went from implicit to explicit as many in the market thought it would and bet accordingly If commercial banking and its safety net were unquestionably separated from investment and broker dealer activities Independent broker dealers would again compete for capital and business clients within an open market Investment banks could provide non-subsidized underwriting Trading and market-making services and these activities would be conducted with far fewer conflicts of interest Then it's currently being experienced Prior to the ability of these two Industries to merge no market in the world was more innovative and competitive than that of the United States With its specialized loan and capitalized capital markets and if an individual firms could succeed and they could fail and did Without bringing the entire financial system down It was in practice a financial model that provided better outcomes than we have experienced since that time as Witness recently What about the broader banking industry in the United States and the so-called regulatory burden that seems to be growing by the day? Well, it's just a fact that following each crisis new laws and regulation Inevitably follow and this most recent crisis is no exception The so-called Dodd-Frank Act in the United States subjects the banking industry to hundreds of pages of laws Requiring thousands of pages of rules and I'm involved in the writing of those rules and it is thousands of pages of rules These laws and regulations operate as a fixed cost for all financial firms No matter the size of the firm rules must be read and implemented Staff must be trained and lawyers must be consulted to assure proper compliance as With any set of fixed costs their averages decline as these costs are allocated over more assets Thus the advent of substantial new regulations with their high fixed cost Encourage the process of consolidation as firms must manage costs down So it becomes its own catalysts towards ever larger firms as firms Consolidate and some become too important to fail They also receive an advantage to fund assets with far greater amounts of debt and at a lower cost than that available to other Regional or community banks in the United States at least for example the leverage ratio The ratio of tangible capital to total tangible assets for the eight largest banks in the US at the end of the second quarter of 2013 was four point three percent using international accounting standards This is approximately half the tangible capital to assets among other US banks and the sheet that has the yellow columns Demonstrate that if you and you can look at it at your leisure, but it's pretty striking in Targeting a specific expected return on equity ROE Therefore the ability to hold half as much capital against the cost of deposits or borrowed funds results in significant pricing advantage In the composition for loans Comparing ROEs among banks it should surprise no one that the ROE for the largest banks in the US at least Even with their current issues of fines and penalties is higher than banks not considered too big to fail This disadvantage makes it proportionally more difficult to attract capital to banks not geared towards consolidation So it becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy Thus pulling back the safety net to commercial banking activities Could have several beneficial effects for regional and smaller banks in the US It would reduce the need for ever more complicated and inverted and some regulation that raised the cost of doing business and courage for their industry Consolidation it would reduce the perception that some banks cannot be successfully allowed to fail Which enhances their access to lower cost of capital and provides them a competitive the edge in pricing products And finally it returns to shareholders the returns to shareholders would be determined by market performance and less by regulatory circumstance What about the public well that's the final area I want to talk about Rationalizing the financial industry structure would serve the interests of the public again in my opinion While industry structure would serve and while while the safety nets extension to an ever-wider array of activities Which encourages excessive leverage and unmanaged assets played a central role in the last crisis When the leverage boom ended at that period and the world discovered that there wasn't enough bank capital to absorb Unexpected losses these large Complex and highly leveraged firm broader economic system to the brink of collapse globally as Result governments were required to commit trillions of dollars of public resources as they struggled to stabilize global Global banks and economies and certainly I know you realize that Even these efforts could not prevent the loss of millions of jobs and the onset of the Great Recession globally The u.s. Has a long history in which its financial structure included firms ranging from many large commercial banks to medium and small banks and Independent investment houses serving a broad range of customers with varying credit funding requirements This decentralized structure contrasts with today's small number of large financial firms Which too often becomes single points of failure as we recently experienced In a private capital financial system, there always will be business cycles business failures and financial losses When financial resources are concentrated in only a few protected firms the impact of any one failure is almost necessarily systemic and sometimes as we've seen catastrophic Rationalizing the structure won't end failure nor should it not in a capital system But it will make failure more manageable and less likely to become catastrophic and that's in the public interest Adam Smith and his wealth of nations recognized this more than 200 years ago and argued as many argue today Who are decentralized less concentrated and less government dependent banking system? So let me conclude and then I'll be happy to take questions or comments in the quest to improve financial industry stability behavior and performance It is unfortunate that we choose complicated administration over structural change It is the financial structure that is inherently unstable yet It remains mostly unchanged from that which existed prior to the crisis. It's even more concentrated The safety net and its subsidy have expanded in scope actually Firms have grown larger and more complex the issue of single point of failure and its effect on the economy has increased in prominence and the competitive Inequities that follow from these circumstances remains mostly unaddressed We share a common goal To have a system where financial firms are well run and successful where the market and customers drive behavior and enhance performance And where financial returns are competitive reliable and therefore able to attract capital In my opinion, it's time to change the current structure to achieve the common goal So I will conclude with that and now I'm happy to take questions or comments if you care to