Dave is a founder member of Nexus and has a background in academic teaching and lecturing positions in the field of sociology. He also has extensive experience of survey based research, dataset management and compilation and analysis of diverse data types from a wide range of sources. In this context he has completed survey based reports for, among others, ICTU, IMPACT, National Social Services Board and the NCCA.
Dave is co-author of Undertaking an Evaluation Sociological Association of Ireland and Combat Poverty Agency (1994 ISBN 0 9513411 2 X) which provides a series of guidelines for would be evaluators. His report Imprisonment for Fine Default and Civil Debt (ISBN 0-7557-1356-7 (2002)) for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform provided the first detailed study of the extent of imprisonment for fine default and civil debt and also about the experience of those imprisoned.
As well as being qualified at postgraduate level in sociology he has information technology qualifications and experience.
He currently has responsibility for supporting FRCs using the SPEAK (Strategic Planning, Evaluation and Knowledge Networking) FRC national database for over 120 Family Resource Centres which has been annually updated from 2004. The Internet browser based system has replaced annual reporting in terms of a document but instead provides a database and tools that allow users to seek and extract information at project and programme level in a number of different ways.
