Minister acts coy at his first gig

IT WAS his first official gig as minister but Batt O’Keeffe wasn’t giving much away during his debut function as the man in charge of the nation’s €9 billion education budget.

There was a sense of irony in his opening a seminar on research, teaching and learning at Cork School of Music, which is part of Cork Institute of Technology (CIT).

The new Education Minister is a former CIT lecturer and he referred to the friends he still has at the college, but no reference was made to one of the obvious hot potatoes that could prove toughest for him to handle.