Love of sport made schooldays very bearable indeed, Paddy Wright recalls

Both my father and my brother had attended O'Connell Schools, in Dublin's North Richmond St, and I thought I'd never get there. I spent my early school years at the Holy Faith Convent, Clontarf, and it wasn't until 1949 that I finally started at O'Connells.

I liked school and loved sport. Football and hurling were my great passions - they made my schooldays very bearable indeed. Brother McDermott - we called him the Six-Inch Cowboy - was very popular. When I was in third class, he started a library which gave me an early love of reading. I've been a great reader ever since.

Later, I became a regular visitor to our local library. In fact, I spent so much time there that my mother accused me of being sweet on the librarian!

Micheal O Muircheartaigh, the famous RTE commentator, was regarded as a god by the boys because he had played football for Kerry. He was a tough teacher, though, and told me: "Wright, you'll never make anything of yourself." When I met up with him recently, we broke our hearts laughing at the memory.

In primary school there were 56 of us in a class. I smile when I hear Senator Joe O'Toole complaining of how difficult it is to maintain discipline in a class of 30. The threat of the leather always hung over us, but it was never used viciously or excessively. At school you got a great respect for authority - I think my generation has a lot more respect for authority than younger generations have.

I also got a great love of religion from school. The Christian Brothers were great men for prayers and that sticks with you, whether you like it or not. I put my ability to get on with people from different backgrounds down to my early schooldays. Numerous ministers of state, including the former Taoiseach Sean Lemass, were past pupils, as were people who became porters in Clerys, for example.

While they never managed to inculcate a love of Irish in me, as a result of my involvement in Gilbert & Sullivan productions at school, I'm still a member of the R&R - the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society.

I wasn't ambitious academically but I was ambitious at sport and was always captain of the hurling and football teams - maybe that was only because I was bossy!

I left school at 18 with a mediocre Leaving Cert and thought I was Brain of Britain! There was no tradition of going to university in my family and, anyway, they couldn't afford to send me. My father was a shopkeeper and expected us to go out and work after we left school.

I got my third-level education at the Workers' College which is now the NCI. I worked as a customs clerk for the B&I and, as a trade union activist, was sent to the college to study economics, statistics, budgetary control and the history of the trades union movement. I found the basic grounding in economics and statistics very useful as I moved up.

If I have one regret, it's that I didn't go to university and spend three or four years doing commerce. Going to college and entering the world of work at 22 or 23 means that you are a more rounded person.

Paddy Wright, president and chief operations officer of the Jefferson Smurfit Group, was in conversation with Yvonne Healy.