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Authors: Mary O'Rourke
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situation. The spending Ministries — Health, Education and Social Welfare — were to be the most keenly targeted, Haughey
asserted, and he concluded with an ominous warning, which I remember to this day: ‘There will be blood on the carpets. It’s going to be a tough time, folks, and if you don’t like
the heat, you’ll have to get out of the kitchen.’ I was just so junior, so untried, so green-horned, so naïve that I can tell you, I kept quiet at that initial meeting. On this
particular occasion, it didn’t seem like the time to put my usual rule of speaking up quickly into practice! I went back to my apartment that night, exhilarated and daunted at the same time,
with my mind in a jumble. I felt that in what I had managed to achieve, Athlone had got its just reward. I felt proud and still very much overawed by what had been bestowed upon me.
However, grim reality was to set in very soon. In the period that followed, we had a series of further Cabinet meetings, day after day, each one laden with what seemed like increasingly dire
financial news. Ray MacSharry of Sligo (‘Mac the Knife’, as he would soon become known) had been appointed Minister for Finance and it was clear from the off that he meant serious
business. Each Minister was issued with a file containing details of the cuts which the Department of Finance wished to impose upon their respective Departments, along with more dire forecasts.
Over a period of two to three weeks thereafter, a series of strong cutbacks were to be imposed immediately, over which really and truly we didn’t have much choice: they were presented to us
as a
fait accompli
. Of course you made your case against them as you could, but because the task was so huge and the time so short, neither Ray MacSharry nor Charlie Haughey listened to my
bleatings or indeed to the bleatings of any of the other Ministers around the Cabinet table. I remember as a comic interlude one occasion on which Finance put forward the proposal that all trains
for the West of Ireland should cease at Athlone!
During that time as Ministers for Health and Education, Dr Rory O’Hanlon and I were soldiers-in-arms together. We were in charge of two of the biggest spending Ministries and we were left
in no doubt that these were where the financial axe was going to fall. Anyone who remembers Ireland in the late 1980s will recall that what is happening in cutbacks these days is mild compared to
the hair shirts imposed upon all of us as Ministers by Mac the Knife. Intellectually, I knew that what we were embarking on was proper and correct if the country was to be saved from financial
ruin, but another part of me registered that these cuts were going to be in my Department and that I as Minister would be held responsible for them, so you can imagine how I felt. As a former
teacher, I knew the lingo and was all too aware of what these strictures from the Department of Finance would really mean in terms of teacher numbers, curriculum choices and overcrowded classrooms.
So it was too for my colleague Rory O’Hanlon in Health. In a way, perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea, putting a doctor in charge of the Department of Health and a teacher in charge of
the Department of Education. We knew what the outcome would be. We could see only too well the forthcoming social, trade union, patient and parental unrest and what would unfold for us from this.
But we had no choice but to put our noses to the grindstone and focus on day-to-day efforts at Cabinet to make our respective cases.
As regards Education and Health, it was clear that the main spending area was staff — teachers and doctors and nurses — and that inevitably, this was where cuts would somehow have to
be made. Education costs could be cut by increasing the Pupil/Teacher Ratio (the PTR ) and yet, despite all of the cutbacks my predecessor Gemma Hussey had imposed, she had
steered clear of this one — and with good reason. My own teaching
asserted, and he concluded with an ominous warning, which I remember to this day: ‘There will be blood on the carpets. It’s going to be a tough time, folks, and if you don’t like
the heat, you’ll have to get out of the kitchen.’ I was just so junior, so untried, so green-horned, so naïve that I can tell you, I kept quiet at that initial meeting. On this
particular occasion, it didn’t seem like the time to put my usual rule of speaking up quickly into practice! I went back to my apartment that night, exhilarated and daunted at the same time,
with my mind in a jumble. I felt that in what I had managed to achieve, Athlone had got its just reward. I felt proud and still very much overawed by what had been bestowed upon me.
However, grim reality was to set in very soon. In the period that followed, we had a series of further Cabinet meetings, day after day, each one laden with what seemed like increasingly dire
financial news. Ray MacSharry of Sligo (‘Mac the Knife’, as he would soon become known) had been appointed Minister for Finance and it was clear from the off that he meant serious
business. Each Minister was issued with a file containing details of the cuts which the Department of Finance wished to impose upon their respective Departments, along with more dire forecasts.
Over a period of two to three weeks thereafter, a series of strong cutbacks were to be imposed immediately, over which really and truly we didn’t have much choice: they were presented to us
as a
fait accompli
. Of course you made your case against them as you could, but because the task was so huge and the time so short, neither Ray MacSharry nor Charlie Haughey listened to my
bleatings or indeed to the bleatings of any of the other Ministers around the Cabinet table. I remember as a comic interlude one occasion on which Finance put forward the proposal that all trains
for the West of Ireland should cease at Athlone!
During that time as Ministers for Health and Education, Dr Rory O’Hanlon and I were soldiers-in-arms together. We were in charge of two of the biggest spending Ministries and we were left
in no doubt that these were where the financial axe was going to fall. Anyone who remembers Ireland in the late 1980s will recall that what is happening in cutbacks these days is mild compared to
the hair shirts imposed upon all of us as Ministers by Mac the Knife. Intellectually, I knew that what we were embarking on was proper and correct if the country was to be saved from financial
ruin, but another part of me registered that these cuts were going to be in my Department and that I as Minister would be held responsible for them, so you can imagine how I felt. As a former
teacher, I knew the lingo and was all too aware of what these strictures from the Department of Finance would really mean in terms of teacher numbers, curriculum choices and overcrowded classrooms.
So it was too for my colleague Rory O’Hanlon in Health. In a way, perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea, putting a doctor in charge of the Department of Health and a teacher in charge of
the Department of Education. We knew what the outcome would be. We could see only too well the forthcoming social, trade union, patient and parental unrest and what would unfold for us from this.
But we had no choice but to put our noses to the grindstone and focus on day-to-day efforts at Cabinet to make our respective cases.
As regards Education and Health, it was clear that the main spending area was staff — teachers and doctors and nurses — and that inevitably, this was where cuts would somehow have to
be made. Education costs could be cut by increasing the Pupil/Teacher Ratio (the PTR ) and yet, despite all of the cutbacks my predecessor Gemma Hussey had imposed, she had
steered clear of this one — and with good reason. My own teaching
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