He then taught for two years in St. Patrick's College in Cavan Town, then worked as a social worker in a prison.
He returned to Maynooth as a seminarian and was ordained in 1980, after which he went to work in a parish in Fermanagh.
He left the priesthood in 1985,[1] then spent seventeen years practising Buddhism.
[citation needed] He is married to the sculptor Cathy Carman (whom he first met in 1984) and they have a daughter Sophia and a son, Simon.
[citation needed] He is an active writer of novels and poetry.