IT WAS not au revoir, it was adieu. The Minister for Education was paying what would, in all probability, be her last visit to an INTO congress, unless she was consigned to Hell in the next life and found that the Devil had devised a particularly apt punishment for her. The thought of Senator Joe O'Toole rebuking her for eternity was one upon which Ms Breathnach would probably rather not have dwelt.
There was an end of term feel to her visit yesterday to Killarney. Earlier in the morning, in the spirit of April 1st, the INTO's Equality Committee had distributed a bulletin entitled How to be a Good Wife. With a little editing, it could easily have been retitled How to be a Good Delegate (for a Departing Minister).
"Minimise all noise ... Be happy to see her. Greet her with a warm smile and BE GLAD to see her," the alternative document might have read. And so it was that the Minister, who at one or two previous INTO congresses had been afforded a reception which even a penguin might have described as `chilly', found herself the object of a temperate, even warm, round of applause upon her arrival
"Listen to her," our adapted guide might continue. "You may have a dozen things to tell her, but the moment of her arrival is not the time. Let her speak first." The Minister, looking relaxed in a jacket and trousers, duly rose to speak. When she acknowledged that she and the delegates had a "sean aithne" from past occasions, and was greeted with some ironic grins, it was reminiscent of watching old fighters giving each other a respectful sock on the chin before continuing on their way. It was like Ali and Foreman at this year's Oscars, but without the pathos.
"Some don'ts: don't greet her with problems and complaints," advises our guide. "Count these as minor compared with what she might have been through that day." Thus it was that the gentle mood seemed to affect even the INTO's general secretary, although when Senator O'Toole took to the podium, bristling with barely suppressed indignation like some Old Testament prophet, it was, still difficult to shake off the impression that the waters of one of Killarney's lakes might miraculously, if briefly, have parted as a result.
Yet the senator announced that he wasn't going to "harangue and have a go at the Minister", admittedly to a chorus of disappointed "aaahs" from the assembled delegates. It was an admirable ambition and, if the senator didn't quite manage to live up to it, he could be forgiven one last rhetorical dance with the Minister.
"General's secretary's prerogative," remarked the departing Minister later, with a trace of a smile.