Playing a part in a drama of change

On a sultry July night in 1997, still recovering from a grueling election campaign, I attended a social function in Limerick. Unfortunately, I left my mobile phone behind. When I arrived home, feeling very tired and not a little emotional, my wife told me the Taoiseach's office had been frantically trying to contact me and the Taoiseach himself wished to see me in his office at 8.30 a.m. Since this was only about six hours away and the journey from Limerick to Dublin takes three hours, the time for reflection was somewhat limited.

The rumour was that I would be offered a job in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform or in some economic department, where my major strengths would lie. However, when I met the Taoiseach at 8.30 a.m. sharp, he informed me that he wanted to move me away from the type of work that I had been doing heretofore and that he was appointing me as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science with specific responsibility for adult education, youth affairs and school transport.

Panic was my first reaction. It was also my second, third and fourth reaction. Although one of my previous occupations was teaching at third level, I felt utterly remote from the Department of Education, and particularly from the three areas of responsibility I was now been given.

However, when I read through the briefing documents prepared by officials in each of those areas of responsibility and spoke to the officials, I felt somewhat calmer. It was immediately evident that those particular areas had remained virtually unchanged for many years and the problems seemed huge, and in some cases insurmountable. I decided to start by doing something about adult education, which I immediately realised was the sleeping giant of the education system. Change in this area was vital for the economic wellbeing of the country.

Adult literacy presented the most immediate problem. The system of adult literacy tuition, such as it was, was struggling along on a financial shoestring of £800,000, dependent almost exclusively on the charity of volunteers. The adverse publicity generated as a result helped me to prise extra money from the Government. I must confess that even this would not have been sufficient if I did not enjoy the personal goodwill of the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, and the unstinting support of the Taoiseach. The fact that investment in adult literacy this year stands at £10.8 million should indicate that I have had some measure of success.

However, adult education encompasses much more than literacy. The whole area was utterly disorganised, shambolic and ramshackle.

Clearly organisation and structure were essential. However, a fundamental re-organisation of this area would require co-operation and support. The task was enormous and the imperative was to hasten slowly.

We have now reached a stage where new structures have been worked out and widely accepted and we are in the process of putting them in place. The whole adult education system in this country has been transformed. What was there a few years ago has, to paraphrase Yeats, "changed utterly". Time will judge the beauty or otherwise of what is replacing it.

While I was struggling to build an adult education system from the ground up and secure adequate funding for literacy, I came under sustained pressure from the youth organisations which were part of one of my other areas of responsibility.

Preoccupied as I was with problems on the adult education side, I had allowed a situation to arise where the youth affairs budget was actually cut in real terms in my first year in office. This was despite independent analysis which indicated that the Ireland youth work budget should actually been twice what it was.

I have rectified this problem somewhat - again, due to the support of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance. The youth budget has increased by over 30 per cent from what it was when I took over. I have managed to divert some of that increase directly into local youth clubs in disadvantaged areas.

THE other problem in the youth affairs area concerned the legislation to put youth work on a statutory basis for the first time. My predecessors had rushed through an inadequate and badly-constructed piece of legislation. It was inoperable as it was designed to function through the new regional education boards, which the last government proposed to introduce if re-elected, but which we were committed to abandon.

I had a simple choice; I could have reintroduced the legislation and operated it through the VECs or I could go back to the drawing board. I opted for the latter course, so we had to start from scratch and the new legislation took three years to produce.

This lengthy process caused huge frustration and anger, and I was forced to act as a lightning rod for the understandable annoyance of the youth organisations. However, the final product is now before the Dail and has proved widely acceptable to those for whose benefit it is intended. The end has justified the frustration.

Space does not permit me to say much about school transport. However, I am delighted that during my tenure an escort and appropriate protective equipment have been provided on all bus routes carrying physically or mentally handicapped children. I was also delighted to be able to announce last week the most substantial package of improvements in the school transport system since my fellow Limerick man, Donough O'Malley, first introduced the scheme a third of a century ago.

My tenure has been a fulfilling if sometimes frustrating experience. There are management problems in the Department of Education and Science, about which I will write more extensively at another time, and in different circumstances. However, there is no lack of will to improve - although inevitably that process will be affected by the brain drain from the Civil Service, caused by the relatively greater attractions of the private sector.

It is difficult for any Minister (with some notable exceptions) to claim that they left an indelible and enduring mark on their Department. It is infinitely more difficult for a humble Minister of State. All I can say with confidence is that I will have left my three areas of responsibility in better shape than I found them. That's enough to be going on with.