I suppose the genesis of the idea for the Green Paper came about in many ways as a spin-off from my very cordial and productive relationships with the various education correspondents in the media. As I have said earlier, I maintained good professional friendships with Pat Holmes of the Irish Press, John Walshe of the Irish Independent and the late and much lamented Christina Murphy of The Irish Times. From time to time I would meet with each of them separately, either in my Department or for lunch somewhere nearby, and in that way I was able to exchange views and ideas about very many worthwhile advances in the field, or discuss shortcomings in the current system, etc. These meetings were, I felt, always very useful, both for me and for the journalists in question. It is from that period, in fact, that I date my ease with the media, because it became clear to me then how much can be achieved by an elected Minister through building and maintaining good journalistic contacts. I felt that such relationships also helped both parties to gain a good sense of what the boundaries should be, of what could be released into the public domain and what could not.
Towards the end of 1989, The Irish Times ran a major piece on education, of which the main gist was, ‘Yes, a lot is happening in the field, but there is a real need for a shape to be put on all of it’. The tone was mildly castigatory, while noting some positives here and there. I confronted Christina Murphy about it and out of the ensuing discussions, an idea grew in my mind — that perhaps it was time to do a Green Paper/White Paper on education. After all, apart from the Vocational Education Acts of the early 1930s and, further back than that, Stanley’s Education Letter and Stanley’s Education Act in the nineteenth century, there had since been no educational legislation which would frame progress in the field or chart the way forward.
I shared my thoughts with Christina Murphy and, in a general way, started to talk publicly about the idea in newspapers and on radio and on TV. It wasn’t long, however, before I got a call from Padraig O’hUiginn, the then Secretary General to the Department of An Taoiseach. He said that this idea of mine was a very good one, but that I should stop talking about it all the time! ‘Why?’ I asked him. He explained that the Department of An Taoiseach wanted to make some sort of pacifying gesture to the teachers’ trade unions following the whole debacle of the Pupil/Teacher Ratio, and they wanted the idea of some kind of new policy legislation to come from the Taoiseach, so to speak.
Very quickly, meetings were set up between our Department and the trade unions and the Department of An Taoiseach, and from these came the formal announcement that the Department of Education and Minister Mary O’Rourke would be embarking on the writing of a Green Paper on Education. Of course, it would be the late Séamus Brennan, in his brief 12-month tenure as Minister for Education, who actually oversaw the publication of this Green Paper in 1992, and Niamh Bhreathnach as Minister in 1995 who would be responsible for the publication of the White Paper and later the implementation of the legislation. But, as history and the paper trail will show, the idea had come from me.
Noel Lindsay was the Secretary General for Education when the work on the Green Paper began. A highly intelligent and effective person, he had been for many years at the World Bank in the US working on educational matters, before returning to the Department of Education in Dublin. He had succeeded Declan Brennan, another fine Secretary General who had been heading up things when I was first appointed Minister in 1987. Declan Brennan himself was a talented administrator and a pleasure to work with. When things got rough, he would keep the head down and keep his composure too. When things were looking up, he would become more buoyant. All in all, he had a wonderful command of his Department and was very well liked and respected.
When the time came for Declan to retire and we were looking to find his successor, there were a few very experienced people vying for the top job. I had my eye particularly on Noel Lindsay, who, I felt, was progressive and forward-looking, as well as very competent. When the matter came to Cabinet, it was he whom I espoused. In the end the collective Cabinet decision was for Noel Lindsay, albeit with my strong support. Noel took up his job with relish and set about his new role as the talented civil servant that he was.
There were many key people involved in the drafting of the Green Paper. These included the various Assistant Secretaries in the Department — the wonderful Tom Gillen, then Assistant Secretary for Primary Education; the Secretary for Second Level; the Secretary for Third Level; and the Secretary for Continuing Education. They each took a hand in the writing; and under them, the various Principal Officers, Assistant Principal Officers and Executive Officers all threw in their tuppence-ha’penny-worth, as the magnum opus began.
Early in the summer of 1991, Noel Lindsay delivered the draft content and format of the Green Paper to me. I remember bringing this long-awaited document home to Athlone to read, and I also recall being utterly, utterly dismayed and shocked. Why? Well, it was a load of civil service twaddle and I clearly recall saying to Irish Independent education specialist John Walshe, ‘I feel like throwing it in the River Shannon, I am so upset!’ In fact all of this, along with many other of my comments during this period of compilation, is recorded in John’s book.
As soon as possible, I confronted Noel Lindsay about the disastrous draft document, telling him that it wouldn’t and couldn’t and shouldn’t do. It was simply not worthy of the Department: it was nothing but civil service droning, and would have to be changed. There followed a great scurrying around in the Department. What was to be done? How would they get over this? In other words, how would they pacify the Minister, who was enraged? And enraged I was indeed!
Finally, a name surfaced: that of John Coolahan, the then Professor of Education at Maynooth College. The same man, I was told, had been the saviour of the Department in earlier times and he was a gifted writer. Professor Coolahan was duly drafted in and presented to me as the guy who would put a human face and a more palatable shape on the Green Paper. The Department commissioned him straight away and he set to the job with gusto. Having spent the day in the Department, going over the raw material and labouring to put a shape on it, he would come into my office every evening between 5 and 5.30 p.m. before he set off home. He would discuss with me various issues that had been raised in his work that day and I would have my say in his ongoing dialogue with my staff.
Professor Coolahan’s contribution was invaluable, not only in terms of the new clarity he brought to the wording of the Paper, but also in terms of the fresh ideas and perspectives he was able to offer. One of his great ideas, for example, related to teacher training. In the barren years for education of the late 1980s, the teacher training budget had been brutally slashed, and Professor Coolahan now felt that it was time to reinstate its central role in education. And, of course, he was right. How could a young man or woman aged 20 or 21 be expected to go into a classroom, armed only with their degrees and their ideas from those degree and post-degree years, and remain at the top of their game for the rest of their careers, if they are never again to be challenged or trained in fresh approaches, ideas or new ways forward? And so teacher education became central to the tenets of the Green Paper.
Slowly but surely, the Green Paper began to take the shape I felt it should have — lively, accessible and informative, instead of sterile and stylised. By the end of the process, it was truly what in my view a Green Paper should be: full of historical facts, yes, but also packed with fertile, creative ideas about the way forward.
As regards the key issue of teacher education, it was during this last year of my tenure in the Department of Education that we were able to get some funding — both from the national exchequer and also from Europe — to go towards setting up a network of Teacher Training Colleges around the country. There had earlier been some, but not nearly enough of them and, with the new European and national focus on training, it became a very logical step to take and I was glad to take it. To this day, I continue from time to time to meet at various events the personnel who are running the
se Teacher Training Colleges, and they always remind me of how the inception of their various establishments came about. I am so glad that this is something we were able to facilitate during my time in the Department.
When, in November of 1991, there was a Cabinet shake-up and Charlie Haughey asked me to take on the Department of Health, I realised with some sadness that I would not be about for the launch of the Green Paper in which I had been so much involved for so many months. I felt pleased, however, that I had conducted thus far the whole process thoroughly and in such a collaborative way. I was very glad to have had the opportunity to engage in such a fruitful way with so many of the various interests in education: the parents’ groups, the teachers’ groups, the students’ and managerial groups, and so on. In this respect, one person stands out with great vividness in my mind: Sister Eileen Randles — a fine, wonderful woman with terrific ideas, who was working with such commitment in the voluntary secondary sector.
I still recall so clearly the night in November 1991 that I finally left the Department of Education. The Assistant Secretaries and many others gathered in my office and we had a few informal words together. I remember how I stood up and said to them that, in all of my life to date — apart of course from having and rearing my children — there had been no more productive or enjoyable time for me than the days, weeks, months and indeed years I had spent in the Department of Education, and in such good company. I totally and genuinely felt like that, and still do. To this day, the things which interest me most in the media and in current affairs are matters of educational interest and I am always so thankful that I was given that time in the Department and was allowed in many ways to give full rein to the creativity within me in that regard, and to pass on my ideas and vision to its various branches and activities. Charlie Haughey gave me that opportunity from which so much flowed in my life and I will always be grateful to him for this. Of course, this did not and does not blind me to the venality of some of his later actions, but I do think it is only right to give proper recognition where it is due.
Chapter 8
YES, MINISTER
When I had entered my fifth year in the Department of Education, I had been very much aware that mine had been one of the longest tenures of any Minister there, and that the time would surely come for me to be moved somewhere else. That time came more quickly than many of us had expected, however. In the autumn of 1991, there was another heave against Charlie Haughey as Taoiseach and leader, which he managed to quell, for the time being. The expression of no confidence in Haughey had been strongly championed by Albert Reynolds and Pádraig Flynn, and so it was not a surprise that, when Charlie subsequently reshuffled his Cabinet, these two men were relieved of their ministerial responsibilities, which was Finance for Albert and Environment for Flynn.
As I mentioned previously, during this time of regrouping, Charlie Haughey had called me into his office and said, ‘Well, what about the Department of Health? Would you take that?’
‘An Taoiseach,’ I replied, ‘I will be going from one Department in which I had battled for five years against spending cuts — am I now to go to another one, where there will be even more radical cuts?’
He came back with, ‘Mary, I think you would be good in Health, and we won’t be too hard on you for your first budget, anyway!’
And so like that, it was decided that I would become Minister for Health.
The truth is, I was terrified of going. I had become so familiar with and attached to the Department of Education — not in terms of the grandeur and all of the titles associated with the Office, but with the civil servants and all of my advisors and staff, as they had come to know me. I felt I had mastered Education and that it had not mastered me and that, by virtue of my teaching career, I had come into that Department with the right background knowledge. And I had loved every minute of working there. Now I was only too aware that I knew not a whit about health beyond what any adult knows about his or own health and what I would read about the subject in the newspapers, out of a genuine but a layperson’s interest in the topic.
However, off to the Department of Health in Hawkins House I had to go, my heart full of trepidation. My great colleague-in-arms and now predecessor, Dr Rory O’Hanlon was meanwhile to take over in the Department of the Environment. One thing which I knew would make my new challenge much easier to contemplate was to be able to bring with me my invaluable Private Secretary, David Gordon, and indeed I insisted on doing so. I have not mentioned David Gordon up to this point, but I simply must give full flight to him now. David had become my Private Secretary two weeks after I went into the Department of Education in 1987. He had been recommended to me by Peter Baldwin, who had been Private Secretary in the Department to Gemma Hussey and indeed her predecessor, Patrick Cooney. I had initially asked Peter to stay on because I knew him and he was a sound guy whom I thought I would enjoy working with, but he had been very keen at the time to get back into the mainstream civil service. However, he put forward David Gordon’s name, as a young man he thought would be very suitable for the post. David and I established an immediate rapport within the Department and, from that point, went on to work very happily together.
The whole species of the Private Secretary in politics is a very interesting one, in fact, which I will say a little more about here so that those readers not intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of the civil service will get a greater sense of some of its machinations.
Every Minister and Minister of State in the Dáil has a Private Secretary, who will act as the bridge between that Minister and his or her Office, and the wider civil service. Those who are picked for such roles are usually very bright, and very competent: generally, they will have already been working in the civil service and will have made a name for themselves, albeit perhaps a small one, in some area of work in which they have been involved. They need to be quick, sharp, confident and effective, and they need to be able to keep simultaneously to the forefront of their minds at all times the needs of their Minister and the needs of the Department. A Private Secretary is after all the conduit to the other officials in that Department, and these other officials will come to know very quickly if he or she has the ear of the Minister, and if he or she is in tune with him or her. You may remember the hugely successful television series, Yes, Minister (now defunct, but re-runs of which can still be seen from time to time)? Well, it is often exactly like that in real life — the Private Secretary and the Permanent Secretary encircling the hapless Minister; the Private Secretary wanting to do the right thing by his Minister; the Permanent Secretary wanting to have his say too — and so the battle goes on and on!
Once initial trust has been established, a smart Minister learns to rely more and more on the word of his or her Private Secretary and indeed on the actions of this individual. I know that I could not have wished for a better civil servant to be in this key position than David Gordon, and many a dilemma with which I was confronted was solved by the courage and the sheer smartness of this young man. Later in my career and his, on the day we parted, I said to David by way of a prediction, ‘Some day you will be Secretary General to the Department of Education’, and I am awaiting that day with anticipation.
When talking of Private Secretaries, I am anxious not to overlook the great importance of civil servants in general and the huge — and often unsung — contribution which is made by those who work within Departments. I never forgot that in his earlier days, my father had been a civil servant and he would often speak of what can be achieved where there is a good working relationship between the civil service and a Minister. Each party has a powerful dynamic which, if used correctly and in tandem, can lead to great momentum within a Department and very fruitful outcomes. As a Minister myself, I was always mindful of that and tried to manage this dynamic to its fullest ability, and in turn, the civil servants I worked with responded with me and to me.
To my mind, however, there has always been a lacuna in that relationship and that
lies in the question: who is ultimately responsible? The files on a particular issue come up to a Minister and then the Minister has discussions with various civil servants — and I always believed in having these discussions down as well as up the lines of authority. Then a final summation is presented to the Minister for approval or disapproval. I would always read these files with great enthusiasm, working through the wordy sentences in order to grasp what they really meant in practical terms. Finally my decision would have to be taken. In that sense, the decision is taken on the advice of the civil servant.
So who then is really responsible? Of course, in the final analysis, one will say, it is the Minister — it is he or she who is in charge. But there has been a huge reluctance in Ireland for any degree of blame to ever be attributed to a civil servant, either to a top civil servant or someone further down the line. Yet how many incorrect and uninformed summations will have been put forward to a Minister for approval? I was always very much aware of this danger: that is why on so many occasions, I added questions to a final document, asking for the whys and the wherefores of how a particular conclusion or recommendation had been arrived at. It does seem lopsided in some ways to me that the Minister is always held responsible, regardless of what decisions have been put to him or her, and their accuracy. It is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, I feel, and legally and legislatively, there does not seem ever to be a proper way of resolving the issue. But there should, I believe, be greater accountability within the ranks of the civil service.
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