Having faced down alcoholism, Gerard Mannix Flynn has moved close to the heart of the arts world. But don't count on his becoming an establishment figure, writes Shane Hegarty.

Gerard Mannix Flynn says he is a contented man. The Irish Times ESB Irish Theatre Awards handed Best New Play to James X, his one-man piece about a child being passed through industrial schools, mental institutions and prison. It has now been published, and his novel Nothing To Say has been reissued. He has been appointed to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and was last year accepted into Aosdána. He has, he says, made great strides in his personal life, facing down the alcoholism that, for 20 years, made him famous around the bars of Dublin.

He believes that as an artist his works State Meant and Not To Be Read In Open Court - both also dealing with abuse - have brought people closer to the horrors of Ireland's recent history. Yet, he says, "I'm allowing people to come to it intellectually, emotionally and spiritually and to be able to open and then close the situation without it being toxic and savage."

Here he is: the archetypal outsider, embraced by the establishment. He might be inside, but it has not cooled him. He remains intense and polemical. When we meet he is vexed by what he perceives as a lack of respect shown to him and to the theatre company Far Cry, which produced James X, by Project, the Dublin arts centre that staged the play. He claims Project neither marketed the play enough nor congratulated him on his success. He is insistent. He believes his experience represents the wider problems that unsubsidised theatre companies have getting through the doors of subsidised venues.

"In terms of nurturing new talent, new directors, new writers, it's not f---ing happening," he says. "Take a look around you and see who's in the jobs, what's going on. It favours the subsidised companies. There's no hope if that bridge is pulled up. You should always be looking for those who are looking for a hand up to be brought in. You should always be looking to be transparent. And you should always be looking to share resources, especially when these resources are a gift from the people." (Willie White, Project's artistic director, says James X received "the same support as anybody else" and that he is delighted by Flynn's success. "It is an enormous vindication of the effort that went into the writing and his placing of this story in the public domain." On the broader point he agrees with Flynn that it is generally difficult for unsubsidised companies to stage work.)

Flynn does not want to name names; he will say only that a "crazy pecking order" is causing the arts to stagnate. No sooner had he picked up his theatre award than he was suggesting that some within the arts should step aside. What did he mean? "We've a terrible habit in this country of putting the personality before the principle. So when a personality moves on we replace it with another personality, and he is compared to the last person. We have to be able to pass on the baton earlier, to the younger generation."

Some of these people, he acknowledges, have worked hard to keep the arts alive. "I'm very aware of the contribution and the sacrifices made by various individuals in their lifetimes and not even given a Mickey Mouse watch. I'm very aware of the toxicity around the arts in this country, of the disgruntlement and the lack of endorsement, lack of nurture. You could actually hospitalise most of the practitioners of arts in this country, they're that stressed by having to perpetrate a falsehood."

He believes the Government should set up a multidisciplinary centre of excellence to foster new talent that he believes is being overlooked. He also believes the art world continues to exclude most of the community. "It's dominated generally by people with little talent who happen to be coming, generally, from the dominant class, who are terrified out of their living daylights to recognise what's going on in this country or to recognise or include the working classes. They're not progressive. They're not hip. And they're not cool. They've taken over the city. They've taken over working-class areas and moved their brat sons and daughters in to live there, and they're arrogant and they're ignorant. We need to get to share the resources: it's a small, small pool, and it can be so big. We are the guardians of our culture, we are the spreaders of our culture, but we can't be with fear. Fear will close us down rapidly."

IMMA is funded by taxpayers' money, he says, so "there's nothing establishment about that". "At the end of the day I'm doing nothing but taking the role as a citizen of the State. And I'm well able to do that now, in the sense that what I had to do prior to all of that was batter down doors. I had to batter down my own door in myself. I then had to go at the various state bodies and the various arts bodies."

He finds hope in the recognition given to James X, in which he plays the titular character, recounting his life as he is about to take a case against the State. Although he has asked that it not be seen as autobiographical, it is deeply rooted in his experience. The audience were given copies of the official file on James X, a slightly altered version of Flynn's file, which he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

"The biggest thing to happen in the Irish arts for the past 20 years is the fact that James X won best play," he remarks. "For me that is really, really courageous, and it says to me: 'Continue what you are doing, we support you.' And that's coming from those who would be deemed the most conservative. That's the message that is passed out, and that is the message that I will pass down to people coming out of the Joy or people coming out of the Gaiety School [of Acting]: that it can be possible, no matter where you're coming from, it can be done."

He is hoping James X will return with Dublin Theatre Festival later this year. Although no venue has been confirmed, he hopes that, in a larger venue and with a new set, he will be able to "take it under its wing and nurture it properly". He wonders why the National Theatre has not offered to stage it.

His next work is the second of his State Meant art pieces, on public exhibition on Leeson Street in Dublin. Requiem For Remains Unknown will consist of five panels of 160 copper plaques with the names, where available, of women buried in the graveyards of convent laundries. An orchestral piece he composed will accompany it, as will a black flag, a tricolour and an EU flag. At its centre will be a statement encouraging the institutions to apologise for their past wrongs.

"I'm trying to say to people: 'This happened.' You can have all the excuses that you like, but unless you admit that this happened we can go absolutely nowhere. This isn't about laws, it's not punitive, it isn't about investigating, it's about admitting. About saying, Yes, yes, yes. Then we can move along."

Does he feel responsible as a survivor of and witness to the industrial schools? "I'm just another artist who's taken this on as a project, who believes this is the best way to do it. There's no point in going into a system that's failed you already looking for justice. What we need now is transparency and progress, because the nation's fibre and the whole health of the country is at stake here."

Requiem For Remains Unknown is at 8 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, from Sunday. Nothing To Say and James X are published by The Lilliput Press at €9.99