Gilmore: I had no role in wife’s job
Carol Hanney will be redeployed from her job as CEO of Dún Laoghaire VEC next year when the 33 VECs become 16 Education and Training Boards (ETBs).
As reported last week by the Irish Examiner, she will become a policy specialist on further education and training under a scheme agreed for three VEC chiefs who will lose out. They are the shortest-serving of the 19 permanent CEOs, and 14 who are currently in an acting role returning to former jobs when the ETBs are formed next year.
Mr Gilmore said: “It is disappointing that some people seem to think that a woman shouldn’t have a job or an independent career.
“My wife Carol Hanney has worked in the education system for 37 years, she was principal of a school, she was principal of a further education college, she has recently been a CEO of a VEC. The VECs are being amalgamated and as part of that process some of the CEOs are being redeployed within the education system. She is one of those being redeployed and is being treated in exactly the same way as the other CEOs who are being redeployed.”
Louth VEC chief Padraig Kirk will take charge of teacher training for reform of the junior cycle. Cork City VEC chief Ted Owens will become acting CEO of the Cork ETB and Clare VEC chief George O’Call-aghan, who was to take the role, will instead lead a Department of Education project examining second-level provision in Limerick.
Mr Quinn said neither he nor his party leader had any involvement in Ms Hanney’s appointment to his department and she would be advising on policy, rather than political issues.
“The Tánaiste had absolutely no involvement whatsoever, nor indeed did I, in the sense that the negotiations and the terms and conditions and the specifications of her redeployment as a permanent civil servant, was conducted between senior officials in the Department of Education and the three people involved.”
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