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EDUCATION PROFILE:When John Coolahan talks, policymakers listen. He has been a pivotal figure in Irish education for decades. Now, the McCarthy Report has goaded him back into the spotlight, writes LOUISE HOLDEN

JOHN COOLAHAN is education’s everyman. He’s a household name in thousands of Irish homes not because of his public profile, but because he has stood before so many pupils and students. For the past 50 years, Coolahan has been a primary teacher, a secondary teacher, a teacher-trainer and a university professor. He has been a principal mover in every major piece of education legislation produced in the past four decades. There is barely a corner of Irish educational policy that he hasn’t coloured and yet, until recently, Coolahan has not entered public debate on policy issues. He prefers to use his vast network to influence reform behind the scenes. So when he drew the media to his criticism of the McCarthy report last month, it stopped many policymakers in their tracks.