Teachers attending union conferences can behave like unruly schoolchildren when they don’t like the minister’s report. Hildegarde Naughton’s predecessor as minister for education, Norma Foley, for example, had to keep her cool when subjected to heckling and slow handclaps.
Unlike delegates expressing pent-up frustration, ministers must remain tight-lipped. But when they retire – if they write a memoir – they can tell a few tales out of school. So we know a few things about ministers’ thoughts on cross teachers thanks to Gemma Hussey and Mary O’Rourke.
Hussey observed that her conference speech was heard by some “quite well dined” but “too well wined” teachers during “one hell of a busy week” in 1985. A study session with her own headmaster, Garret FitzGerald, proved useful, despite the “long statistical questions” he liked to ask ministers.
She spent hours working on her speeches, carefully practising the tricky Irish language sections, in her basement, “doing a Virginia Woolf on it” by locking herself away.
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The swotting paid off for the nervous minister, and her first two speeches were received, respectively, “somewhat sullenly” and “almost warmly”. She fared better with the third address to about 600 delegates who greeted her “fairly politely” – some even applauded at one point.
Overall, however, facing teacher unions was daunting. “I sometimes wonder after speaking to these huge hostile groups will anything ever frighten me again.”
Hussey was not nervous when asking a senior colleague for invitations for some of her “sisters” in public life. When a top US Democrat, Geraldine Ferraro, visited Ireland – she ran, unsuccessfully, for US vice president in 1984 – Hussey hoped for some seats at an event in Iveagh House. The minister for foreign affairs, Peter Barry, told her she was treating Ferraro “as a woman and not a politician” – Hussey explained there were some people who were both.
Her diaries contain a revealing thought about her taoiseach and his Fine Gael-Labour coalition. While fond of FitzGerald, she recorded the perceptive comment of a friend that “no one with so much self-doubt should be leader”.
Unlike Hussey, Fianna Fáil’s O’Rourke saw her headmaster, Charlie Haughey, as brisk, decisive and blunt.
However, she tells us in her autobiography that she turned down the opposition leader’s offer of shadowing the women’s affairs minister because she did not want to be pigeonholed. Her husband told her, very colourfully indeed, that her career in politics was finished. But he was wrong about “the boss”. Haughey came back and offered her the job of marking Hussey.
O’Rourke accepted and proceeded to make “her life hell on occasion, as she did mine”.
O’Rourke became minister for education after the 1987 election when Fianna Fáil condemned Fitzgerald’s cuts in public services. And then Haughey executed a U-turn. Despite their best efforts, Fitzgerald’s government, apparently, had not tackled the enormous national debt, and education and health were still seen as the “big spenders”.
O’Rourke remembered Haughey warning: “It’s going to be a tough time, folks, and if you don’t like the heat, you’ll have to get out.” Ray McSharry – soon to be known as “Mac the Knife” – meant business.
O’Rourke emerged from her first round of teacher union conferences without getting burned, but only because McSharry’s proposals had not been formalised. But “uproar” followed when she announced a policy “bombshell” – fewer teachers, more pupils. “I could not justify it on educational grounds, only on financial ones and that was proving very difficult.”
A former teacher herself, she knew she would have a rough time when she faced the unions. Each conference was a shooting gallery, with the minister the target.
[ Mary O’Rourke laid the critical groundwork for State’s success in techOpens in new window ]
Her first speech involved receiving the silent treatment. Despite having “a good, strong voice” developed during her teaching days, O’Rourke sat down to silence. A few delegates broke ranks to speak to her as she left – “to the chagrin of the top platform” – and she felt she had passed the first test.
The minister also awarded herself a pass for her following two performances when she encountered “degrees of distrust, disbelief and worry”.
Her days in charge of education came to an end when Albert Reynolds replaced Haughey as taoiseach and sacked a number of ministers. O’Rourke was one of them. Unlike her demoted colleagues, however, she did not meekly accept her fate – she demanded to know why she had been fired. Taken aback by this, Reynolds offered her the women’s affairs job only for her to reject it.
“I refused it in 1987 and I am refusing it now.” With that, she wrote, “I flounced out of the room.” Later that evening, she had “a few stiff gins” and “cried into my duvet cover”. Nonetheless, her self-belief stood to her again.
The next morning the taoiseach offered her a junior ministry with responsibility for consumer affairs, which O’Rourke accepted. Her “bold streak” proved to be her ace card.
From then on she could enjoy her Easter egg in peace and not have to worry about how her speech would be received at a teachers’ union conference.
