An insider's guide to education
Hanafin's week to forget
Mary Hanafin is expected to remain in the Department of Education until September 2009. She should become the first education minister in some considerable time to complete a full five-year stint in Marlborough Street.
There must have been times during the last week when Hanafin thought her next posting could not come quickly enough.
Hanafin is still recovering her poise after that stinging (and opportunistic) rebuke from Mary O'Rourke on the subject of autism.
Hanafin knows she cannot win in a public debate understandably dominated by emotion. Her record on special needs is actually very good - a fact acknowledged by the INTO - but this has been lost in the emotion of the current debate. On autism, her policy - backing a range of teaching methods - is exactly that pursued by her predecessors, Noel Dempsey and Michael Woods. Maybe, like Hillary Clinton, she is suffering because the public expects to see greater compassion from female politicians.
The unlikely junketeer
On the wider front, Hanafin has been savaged in the tabloid press over that trip to Florida which coincided with the Dáil debate on autism. But the Irish-US Alliance meeting was an important showcase for Ireland, attracting Trinity Provost John Hegarty, UCC boss Michael Murphy and other senior academics.
Hanafin is an unlikely junketeer. She is probably the most hard-working and frugal member of the Cabinet. Indeed, she has faced criticism for dedicating every working day and her weekends to "the job".
The good news for her is that Bertie, Brian Cowen and Michael Martin all rushed to her defence on autism last week. But it was a week she will want to forget.
Cashing in
That €100 million from the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) was used to trumpet the close links between our third-level colleges. So how come so many Dublin colleges were irritated when DCU claimed the lion's share of credit for the €21 million won by an alliance of third-level colleges in Dublin?
And what's happening at NUI Galway? The colleges's €3.3 million from the SIF paled, when compared with much larger funding for UCD, UL and the rest. Expect new president Jim Brown to ask some questions.
This column will miss the wit and wisdom of TUI boss Jim Dorney who retires shortly. In an interesting valedictory piece in TUI News, Dorney takes issue with our description of him as "sometimes brilliant". Says Dorney: "I am always brilliant".
