It was Micheal Martin's final press conference in the Department of Education. After he announced a £4 million initiative to help those with special education needs, there was some giddy laughter about the reshuffle and his departure from Marlborough Street.
Unprompted, two women in the audience rose to pay tribute to the Minister; one was from the Irish Society for Autism, the other from a group representing dyslexic children.
Both spoke effusively about Mr Martin's contribution, how he had changed things and made a difference. The Minister blushed with embarrassment and no little pride. Around the room, there was a general sense of dejection among the senior officials present. Martin had taken that most crusty of Government Departments, An Roinn Oideachais agus Eolaiochta, and placed it at the cutting edge of the technological and learning revolution.
Micheal Martin, unlike his immediate predecessor, Niamh Bhreathnach, and several other former ministers, leaves Education with his political reputation considerably enhanced. The booming economy has helped. Funding for education has increased by more than 45 per cent during his tenure.
But that is only part of the story. A former teacher and a former opposition spokesman on education, Martin had a natural empathy with the terrain and the detailed knowledge required to shape policy from day one.
He placed the now customary emphasis on partnership and consultation, but if there was one defining moment it was a Morning Ireland exchange on class sizes with the doughty INTO president, Senator Joe O'Toole. Martin refused to crumble under O'Toole's sustained assault, giving back as good as he got. It was confirmation, if such was needed, that there was steel behind all the smiles.
Interviewed on Wednesday, as he prepared to leave office, Mr Martin was disarmingly blunt about the failings of the Irish educational system, and the common tendency to exaggerate its merits. "We're relatively well placed in terms of our high achievers. The majority of those come through the system do very well and compare very well with their peers internationally," he said.
"I think, however, we have a significant portion of our school-going population who need extra support and help, whose standards we will have to improve. I think there is too much complacency about the system.
"I think there has been a tendency to pat ourselves on the back too much about our education system in the past and say, `Aren't we the best in Europe?' We're not the best in Europe and we're not the best in the world, either."
Martin does not accept that this complacency can be explained, in part, by the dearth of information available to parents about their children's schools.
Does he accept that parents should have a right to see how their child's school (or prospective school) is performing in terms of exam results? "Well, parents can't demand it [information] in advance, but parents know exactly how schools are doing in their areas. . . What we find happening is that principals volunteer the results. That's what's happening at the moment.
"I think the Education Act [enacted during his term of office] will result in far stronger flow of information to parents, in any event. Yes, there has to be evaluation of what's happening in education. We have decided to develop an Irish template, an Irish model, for evaluation. It's [called] whole school evaluation.
"Our Department is working closely with all the parties concerned with a view to mainstreaming that process. So I think everyone has to realise within the system that there has to be evaluation."
He has no regrets about opposing the publication of school league tables in the courts. "I think the league tables are far too crude. And I would worry about the impact the league tables would have on the teaching methodologies in school and the degree to which the curriculum might change. There has already been criticism of the degree to which the exam system is dominating the curriculum.
"If the league tables came in there would be a focus on exam results and nothing else. Also there would be worries about disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. Principals would be worried," he said. In any case, he had detected no great clamour from the parents of Ireland for league tables.
For all that, there was a strong sense that, during his time in office, Martin grew impatient with the lack of accountability at the heart of the education system. It may be that his tenure will mark the end of an era in which the educational agenda is dominated almost entirely by the issue of resources.
In future, there may be a new concentration on quality. How good is the Irish education system? What kind of return does it deliver on an investment of some £3,000 million a year? Martin said the new Teaching Council, which provides a grievance mechanism for parents, and the whole school evaluation (a new system of inspection for teachers) would provide a degree of accountability. But one senses that he would have liked to achieve more on behalf of parents.
He refused to say that the powerful teachers' unions were barriers to progress. But he was not always enamoured of their approach. "Unions - in terms of their composition, in terms of their dialogue with the broad membership - are maybe too defensive. At times they anticipate what the broad membership will feel about a particular issue without really testing the ground out.
"I just feel at times maybe they should have a self-review as well in terms of how they see education. The present row, for example, pertaining to performance and pay is a good example where fears were, in my opinion, built up in a short space of time.
"But I never saw teachers as an obstruction in terms of pursuing the agenda. You have to work with teachers. Some people have the approach that there are a number of bad teachers out there and let's try to get the bad teachers out - and there are all sorts of techniques and mechanisms to do that. My worry about that approach is that we risk destroying the entire system, because there are many teachers out there doing good work."
Martin has a range of initiatives to his credit: funding on access for the disadvantaged is up by 1,390 per cent since three years ago, expenditure on research and development by 67 per cent. The New Deal, a visionary document which seeks to address inequality across all education sectors, provides a blueprint for his successors.
In schools, the £55 million IT 2000 programme has seen the information age reaching every classroom in the State, while some 24,000 teachers have trained in information technologies in the past year alone. Almost £300 million has been allocated to school capital projects and a new emphasis given to the remedial sector and to children with special learning difficulties.
For the past 12 months in particular, Mr Martin - assisted by his highly regarded special adviser, Mr Peter MacDonagh (now promoted to work in the Department of the Taoiseach) - have been dispensing the good news, and earning the plaudits.
The irony is that, despite all the favourable publicity, Micheal Martin has wanted for some time to move on, because it all began to appear too easy. It is known that some of his fellow Ministers have cynically cast him as no more than the shiny, high-spending Minister pushing an open door.
Martin himself has been impatient to test his mettle elsewhere, by signalling his readiness to take on the supposed poisoned chalice of health. He has been granted his wish.
Since the performance of the health service is far more politically sensitive than that of the educational system, he is moving towards centre-stage. He is ready to build the next phase of his career path, but many will feel he is leaving too early, with too much still undone.
Reflecting on the past 2 1/2 years, he said: "I gave it everything I had and I think you should give this or any job everything you have. It's great to work in the interests of people. And, yes, that sounds corny and cliched, but that is why I'm in politics." He laughed when he recalled the advice from the Examiner that he needed six months of unpopularity to become a real political player.