School Daze: Actor Mark Smith says 'school showed me I could be great'

Actor Mark Smith (39), who has Down syndrome, says his teachers always believed in him

Actor Mark Smith (39), who has Down syndrome was an ambassador for HB Ice Cream Sunday,

I went to school in St Marys National School in Maynooth, but I didn’t go there for very long. After a while, I went to St Raphael’s Special School in Celbridge and stayed there until I was 21.

My friends Cormac, Padraig and Maurice, are a part of all of my school memories. We were together from Holy Communion, to Confirmation and then Graduation. We used to have great fun together, there was a pool in St Raphael’s and we didn’t do much swimming, we’d spend our time wrestling!