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.

The institute’s president Dr Brendan Murphy presented Mr O’Keeffe’s predecessor Mary Hanafin with an application to become a university just two months ago. But similar applications from the Institutes of Technology in Waterford and Dublin mean the decision — although ultimately one for the Government — will be one that even Bertie Ahern’s propensity for consensus would have difficulty making.

Mr O’Keeffe reiterated the Government’s ambitions for a research-led fourth level education system to help feed the slowing economy with quality graduates. But he also referred to the need for a quality undergraduate system to produce people who have benefited from learning informed by top-class research.

There was further irony in this, as third level bosses and unions have been crying out for greater investment in undergraduate staffing and facilities, which they claim have been neglected in a Government overfocus on its fourth level research mission.

Asked about this afterwards, Mr O’Keeffe said it’s all about finance — a mantra bound to be heard from the entire cabinet over the coming months.

“We’d love to provide the adequate finance for every education sector but that’s obviously going to be conditional on what is available and what can be achieved,” he said.

Another hot potato for Mary Hanafin before him was the question of class sizes in primary schools. But with the first step of last summer’s commitment already foregone because of the economic situation, the new minister would not be drawn into any promises he might not be able to keep.

“Everything in the programme for government was predicated by the availability of finance and everything I do into the future will depend on the financial package that’s available to me. It would be my desire, of course, to meet all the aspirations in the programme and I’ll be working towards that.”