Donncha O hEallaithe was midway through an engineering course at University College, Dublin when it dawned on him he was never going to be the world's greatest an engineer. He finished his degree, but then fulfilled his real dream which was to teach maths - not just anywhere but in Galway where he could live in the Connemara Gaeltacht. The switch to maths teaching brought him full circle. As it was his flair for maths at secondary school in his native Clonmel that led him to engineering.
"Maths and engineering went together, but at UCD I quickly discovered that my heart wasn't in engineering, " he says. In 1970 a weekend trip to Connemara, which was then bristling with Irish civil rights activism, fired his sense of idealism and convinced him this is where he should live. A lover of the language, he had been involved in the Irish movement in Dublin but he found it stuffy and puritanical. Not so in Connemara: he sensed a strong affinity with the people there and revelled in their free-spirited approach to living: "I was fired up by the spirit of revolution I found there. They were challenging things and setting up their own pirate station. It was inspiring and I craved to be a part of it."
On his first trip west, he saw a site being cleared for the new Regional Technical College in Galway and said to himself: " That's where I'd like to be." That's where he is today, lecturing in maths in what's now called the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
His home is in Indreabhan in the Gaeltacht where he is deeply involved in the life of the community. Before the lecturing post, he spent six months in Galetarra Eireann whose energetic endeavours were generating jobs and enabling people who had emigrated to return home with their families.
But, identifying more with workers than management, he declined to train as a manager and went for the Maths lecturing job. " The students I teach are from the catchment area of Galway, Mayo, Roscommon and Clare, and I find that they are awfully easy to get on with,' he says.
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