THE EDUCATION PROFILE: Dr Paul Mooney, President of the National College of Ireland:From an early start as a butcher, Paul Mooney went on to achieve great successes in industrial relations, HR and management consultancy before turning his attention to education. Restless and mercurial, he's also published eight books, including a crime thriller

AN EARLY school leaver, the son of an illiterate labourer, one of a large family from a small house in Dublin's north inner city — a boy like that has his work cut out making it to third level. But Dr Paul Mooney not only made it, he's the President of the National College of Ireland.

He made his way to the top job via a butcher's apprenticeship which ended in a PhD. Along the way, he specialised in industrial sociology, wrote eight books — including a thriller — and established a profitable and prestigious HR consultancy.

What kind of man has such a sure grip on his own bootstraps? "He's a maverick, and he knows it," says a close friend. "When he went for that job leading NCI, he was so wellprepared, no other candidate stood a chance."

When Paul Mooney dropped out of school at 14, it was the last time he took the easy option. He has spent so much of his life clawing back his education that he has come to prize learning above all else, according to those close to him. Since taking up his role as president of NCI (where he was once a student), he has injected the role with his unnatural energy levels, exhausting those around him.

"Paul is very demanding and expects a great deal from the people he works with," says a close colleague. "He's very impatient, always hovering around you, waiting for you to deliver so he can move on to the next thing." Mooney was seen to hover around the Department of Education and Science in the days running up to the Budget, leaning on the Minister to examine the status of the docklands college.

MOONEY HAS only been in the job for a year, taking over from Joyce O'Connor in 2007. It's too early to assess his impact on the National College of Ireland, but he has made his vision for the institution abundantly clear. He's not interested, he says, in being part of a "better-looking ghetto" in Dublin's dockland area.

The NCI moved into the IFSC 10 years ago, from the small Ranelagh campus where it had served as a Jesuit-run industrial relations college for 50 years. Since arriving in the docklands, NCI has annually drawn 1,000 full-time and 4,000 part time students to courses in accountancy, business, community studies and human resource management.

Unsurprisingly, Mooney comes to the college determined to find more room for students from working class backgrounds, especially those that live around Dublin's north inner city. He, and his predecessor Joyce O'Connor, want the college to contribute something other than real estate to the docklands. Before he can bring the non-traditional students in from the cold, however, he needs to bring NCI into the higher education fold. He has admitted in interview that the college has identity issues to work through. Many Dubliners assume it's a private college — it isn't.

However, nor is it a member of the Higher Education Authority. Yet the college is delivering third- and fourth-level education to thousands of students. Its ambitions belie its origins — much like Mooney himself.

"Paul loves a challenge," says a friend. "He had no financial reason to take this job. He's just fascinated with the transformative power of education and the chance to breathe new life into NCI."

Perhaps the first person to spot his ambitious streak was his apprenticeship trainer at DIT when Mooney was a teenager. "At that time, I got the feeling he was going places," says Sylvester Byrne of DIT Cathal Brugha Street. "He never missed a class, and there was no great pressure to attend. He was a relationship builder too — he was always making connections with everyone at DIT from the porters and caretakers up."

Mooney was training to be a butcher. He took up the apprenticeship as a route to a crust, but soon learned that he loved learning at least as much as earning. "It wasn't enough just to be a butcher. He had to be the best butcher. He got Butcher of the Year when he worked in Superquinn. That's just typical," says a family member.

WHILE WORKING in the meat business, he began to take an interest in what went on beyond the counter. He moved into production management, working for several years with UK multinational Initial Services. During this time, he went to study industrial relations at the sire of the NCI, the National College of Industrial Relations in Ranelagh. It was an auspicious move for a number of reasons. It was there he met both his wife, Linda, and his future employer, John McGlynn of General Electric.

"If you saw his CV at that time, you wouldn't necessarily take him on as a HR executive in General Electric," says McGlynn, who studied with Mooney on a national diploma programme in industrial relations. "But I saw him in action. He could assimilate and articulate information like nobody else. He's so focused — he has a great capacity to deliver. He gets places faster than others."

McGlynn decided to give him a break and offer him a job he wasn't really qualified for — at least not on paper, working in the personnel office in GE. Another fellow student, a trade union representative with whom he clashed vigorously on ideological grounds, decided to give him a break too, marrying him several years later. Linda and Paul Mooney now have three children.

From General Electric, Mooney moved to Sterling Drug as Human Resource Director for the Pacific Rim. In 1991, he came back to Ireland and set up PMA Consulting, providing clients with organisation and management development programmes.

"The practice was very successful — he was in the top quartile of consultancy practices," says a former employer. "I was surprised when I heard he was going for the NCI job. He sent me his submission — it was riveting stuff."

Mooney's flair for telling a good story is not confined to resumes. Most of his eight published books are concerned with organisational theory, but he has just launched a crime thriller, The Badger Ruse, the story of a Dublin consultant whose dalliance with a prostitute leads to murder.

He's also learning how to play the guitar. Is there any risk that his restless intelligence might draw him away from NCI and on to the next big challenge?

"As long as Paul feels he has a role to play in NCI, he'll keep pushing," says a colleague. "He's too engrossed in this project to lose focus." There's plenty of work to be done, but Mooney has rightly spotted that branding the college is a priority, no matter how complicated the story of NCI might be. When it comes to happy endings, Mooney has shown he can deliver.

Peter Mooneya man on a mission

Mooney only took up leadership of NCI in 2007, but he has already made some radical changes to the college with 5,000 students in Dublin's Docklands.

• Within months of taking up the position of college president, Mooney had totally restructured NCI, moving people and departments around to refocus the talents of college staff. Miraculously, he succeeded in bringing about change without opposition. Staff report satisfaction with the new arrangements and Mooney's collaborative style.

• NCI is a third level, not-for-profit, educational provider. Last year, Mooney formally applied for designation as an Institute of Higher Education, which would bring NCI into the Higher Education Authority and secure higher levels of State funding for the college.

• Mooney has established a new School of Community Learning, to be launched by President McAleese next month.

• NCI's Jesuit past fell into shadow when the college moved to lay management and a new campus. Mooney has renewed the focus on the tradition of NCI, establishing an exhibition of Jesuit history in the college reception area.

• Mooney is pushing the development of fourth-level study at NCI, and is lobbying for funding from research bursaries, both private and public. His push to get NCI into the HEA is central to this, as he told the Minister for Education in his recent submission: "There is considerable confusion around NCI's current status leading to the loss of funding from national and international donors. Millions of euro have been lost from philanthropists who are attracted by our 'second-chance' mission - but who do not understand why the college is not officially designated as a third-level player."

• He calls NCI the "college without walls" and has a robust commitment to bringing students from all backgrounds into third level. "NCI is historically 'best-in-class' on the issue of widening participation," Mooney told the Minister for Education and Science in a recent submission, "including engaging part-time students, disabled students and working with Travellers. Eighty per cent of our current students can be defined as 'access' versus a sector norm of five to 10 per cent."