THE EDUCATION PROFILE: BRIGID MCMANUS, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE:Brigid McManus will play a key role as the Department of Education braces itself for today's Budget cuts. Immensely popular, she is accessible and open, but the task ahead of her is a formidable one, writes Louise Holden
CANDLES were burning low in State offices around the city last weekend, as civil servants pruned the last few twigs off their branches of government ahead of today's Budget. In the offices of the Department of Education and Science in Marlborough Street, however, there's nothing unusual in that.
The Secretary General, Brigid McManus, makes a habit of burning the midnight oil - her forensic attention to detail suggests that her role in today's savagery may be less crude than elsewhere.
It's been three years since McManus was lifted from her gamekeeper job in the Department of Finance to her poacher's position today. She goes cap in hand to a Finance Department in which she played a central role for many years, dealing with taxation, public expenditure and the National Development Plan. McManus is not your average civil servant.
"Brigid has occupied a unique collection of positions in the civil service," says one former colleague. "As well as holding the purse strings for a long time, she also acted as policy adviser to Síle de Valera when she was Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. She knows what they're looking for in the Department of Finance, but she can also anticipate what a minister might want - that's an unusual mix."
Anticipating the intentions of others has brought McManus to the top of the tree - only the fourth woman to reach the position of Secretary General in the civil service and the first in the Department of Education and Science. Married with one child, McManus has public service in her blood. Both of her parents and three of her siblings have worked for government, although the marriage ban put paid to her mother's career in the 1950s.
At Manor House School in Raheny, north Dublin, Brigid's showed exceptional promise in the sciences, but chose instead to study history and economics at UCD. She joined the civil service as an administrative officer in the Department of Finance as soon as she graduated.
Her exceptional intelligence and ability ferried her quickly through the grades, and brought her into contact with a wide range of movers and shakers in government.
McManus was deeply involved in Ireland's bid for EU structural funding in the late 1990s. This bid won a massive €8 billion for Irish infrastructure. She also played a central role in preserving Ireland's low tax regime in the face of EU challenges and helped to shape national tax policy in her years in the Department of Finance.
"She's the kind of person who can finish your sentences for you, sometimes before you've even started them," says a leading educational figure. "She's a lateral thinker with an uncanny eye for detail - she'll spot things in a brief that everyone else will miss."
It's going to take some lateral thinking to deliver Budget savings in a Department with so many mouths to feed. McManus is charged with divvying up one of the largest slices of the Exchequer - over €8bn - but that has to educate everyone from junior infants to PhD students. Adult and early childhood education have been left crying at the door. It's hard to see where cuts can be made, but McManus will have to break some hearts.
"The quangos are in trouble," one commentator muses. "There will be changes at third level, too, but beyond that it's hard to see where the savings will come from. McManus and her team will be forced to swing the axe on small money. They've already closed the Centre for Early Childhood Development in St Pat's - that only saved them a pittance."
Death by thousand cuts is not McManus's style. She is regarded as something of a visionary, to the left in her politics, with a strong sense of her duty to the national interest. In her three years as secretary general she has attempted to bring her strong work ethic and commitment to efficiency to Marlborough Street, appointing a couple of "bright young things" as assistant secretaries (Seán Ó Foghlú and Kevin MacCarthy).
"Brigid likes to be challenged by the people around her," says a former colleague. "She's not interested in yes-men." However, she presides over a department where reform is glacial at best.
"The Department of Education is a dinosaur," says one figure from primary education. "Dealing with them is like stepping back 40 years in terms of communication and operational behaviour. Brigid is holding the reins at one of the most difficult periods in the Department's history, but she is trying to make inroads by bringing in new people and practices. However, it will take years for the effects to be felt and she may not get the credit she deserves ." While no-one doubts her ability or commitment to the task, there are those who believe that education is beyond reform. "You can make changes at the top level, but they won't filter down to the schools. The system is too rigid," says one department insider.
McManus has attempted to overcome this problem by getting as close to the grassroots as she can. She puts herself about, say stakeholders, and has made a genuine effort to get cosy with her various sectoral charges.
"Unlike some of her predecessors, she has taken an active interest in third level," says one university figure. "She's very accessible and she knows the issues. The trouble is, she deals with everything personally, and that limits her ability to actually make change happen. She needs to bring more people from the Department along. It will be hard for her to change the culture there - she's great in the role, but she faces a daunting challenge in turning the Department around."
McManus is too politically astute to let it be known that she has an appetite for reform, say those who know her. However, if she has a manifesto, she may get a chance to unveil it in her role on the task force to develop a new Action Plan for the Public Service of the 21st Century, to which she was appointed in May. She is joined on the force by senior figures from Accenture, Glanbia and Penneys, as well as the secretaries general of the five largest Government departments.
It was Mary Hanafin, in her previous role as Minister for Education, who brought McManus into the Department. There she teamed up with policy advisor Averil Power and press officer Ger Butler to provide formidable scaffolding for the Minister.
"I was only in the Department two months before her, so we worked together throughout that period," says Hanafin. "Like every teacher I thought I knew it all. It was great to have someone like Brigid, coming from Finance, who knew all the angles. She could see the money side of things, but she understood the education issues as well. She goes to all the conferences, engages with all the issues. She never stops working."
Hanafin took Power and Butler with her to the Department of Social and Family Affairs, leaving MacManus to go it alone in education. "She brought a good team with her and has united that team. I miss them like mad," says Hanafin.
One of the traits that has most endeared McManus to her peers is her fearlessness and honesty. "She saves time by talking straight," says one colleague. "Brigid will never say one thing to one party and another behind their back. She's blunt and outspoken at all times, and she's happy to be challenged. She regards that as making progress."
The time she saves through honesty, she loses again through loquacity, however. "You can schedule a one-hour meeting with Brigid, but allow two hours," says one educational leader. "She knows how to talk." Most who have worked with her regard her affability as a strength. "At some of these education dinners you'd be tempted to swap the nameplates on the table," one insider confides. "But if you see Brigid's name next to yours, you leave it where it is."
There's no doubting McManus's popularity; she'll need it as she weighs in on the most unpopular Budget in a generation.
The Education Purse
• The Department of Education and Science has 9 per cent of the Gross Capital Expenditure available to the Government in 2008.
• Of that, Secretary general Brigid McManus and her team have €9,053,452,000 to spend on the cost of running primary, post- primary and third-level education in Ireland.
• The money available for capital projects in 2008 is estimated to be €827 million.
• Irish expenditure on education is less than five per cent of GNP, compared with more than 10 per cent for social welfare, almost nine per cent for Health.
• There are 114,226 on the Department of Education and Science payroll, including more than 50,000 teachers.
• The Department spends almost €3 billion on primary education, and a further €3 billion on post- primary education.
• Almost €2 billion is spent at third level.
