Tech drive brings O’Keeffe back to his salesman days

HE once had to knock on doors to get people interested in encyclopedias, but now Batt O’Keeffe is putting them into the country’s 4,000 schools.

As a door-to-door salesman for World Book in the 1980s, he is said to have one of the best sales records in the country supplementing his income as a lecturer in Cork Regional Technical College.

But now as Education Minister, he does not need to use his selling skills anymore as his department is paying almost €500,000 to provide every primary and second-level school with online versions of World Book and Encyclopedia Brittanica.