Although set to be the front runner in Dun Laoghaire in the next election now that colleague David Andrews and FG deputies Sean Barrett and Monica Barnes are stepping down, FF's Mary Hanafin is ever the politician. A pupil who left Sion Hill (where Hanafin taught before the Dail), has sent Quidnunc a copy of a letter she received from her former teacher, with the comment that she must have kept all addresses. But then, this old girl is a constituent. Hanafin writes that she is now Minister for Children and she hopes to continue to draw on the knowledge and expertise of her former pupils. Despite their advancing years, she invites them to contact her on children's issues or indeed on anything at all on which she can be of assistance. Hanafin will go far.