Daniel McConnell: After 20 months in office, we still don’t know the real Norma Foley

She has garnered the trust of senior Cabinet colleagues, but there are doubts as to whether Norma Foley has the style or vision needed for leadership

Minister for Education Norma Foley: Former colleagues describe her as “hard-working, courteous if somewhat aloof”.

Norma is like Marmite — you either love her or you don’t.

That was the sobering assessment of Education Minister Norma Foley from one of her Fianna Fáil TD colleagues this week.

A first-time TD, Foley was catapulted into Cabinet by Taoiseach Micheál Martin in late June 2020.

She endured a decidedly rocky start to her ministerial life, but has since repaid the trust placed in her by Martin.

Her decision — and it was her decision — to eschew calls for a hybrid Leaving Cert exam this year has drawn criticism, but she has stuck to her guns. She showed a similar level of steel this year in resisting calls to keep schools closed after Christmas despite the Omicron surge of Covid-19.

But now, 20 months in office, many of her colleagues around the Cabinet table say they still don’t know the real Norma, and many question whether she can bridge the gap of being an effective administrator to a visionary minister.

She was born in 1970 to her father Denis Foley, a Tralee native, and her mother, Hannah O’Halloran of Ballyheigue, 12 miles away, She was named after her mother’s mother, Nora Mary or Norma.

Denis was born in the building in Day Place, Tralee, which housed the Fianna Fáil headquarters where his parents were caretakers, so as she said in a local interview, he was literally born into the party.

In her early teens, she would regularly get up on a butter box after Mass and speak to constituents on her father’s behalf. Getting to speak first over the candidates could be a rough business, but Foley didn’t mind.

“There was nothing chivalrous about it, even though I was the youngest, and probably the only girl or female there,” Foley said. 

I mean, you didn't get any allowances for that for being 13 or 14. I think that was a great education for me, because I've always appreciated that I don't believe you should be getting any allowances because you're a particular age or because you're a particular gender."

Her father’s career was to end under a cloud as he was forced to make a final settlement of €580,000 in a tax bill that included interest and penalties.

The former TD and chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee was the subject of a Revenue Ansbacher investigation.

But by that time, Norma was already on Tralee Town Council since 1994 and Kerry County Council since 2004. She stood unsuccessfully in the 2007 general election. Before she entered the Dáil, she was mayor of Kerry three times.

Former council colleagues describe her as “hard-working, courteous, if somewhat aloof”. One former colleague said she was personable, but one never got too close to her as she was “always busy”, so the shield never really dropped.

As a whip of the Fianna Fáil councillors, she became somewhat of a mentor to younger colleagues and developed her political voice.

She was a conservative voice on many issues, and did not feel her gender did her a disadvantage despite being one of only two women on the council.

“I have never found it to be a disadvantage to be a woman, nor have I found it an advantage,” she said. “I have regarded myself as a candidate who happens to be a woman.”

Not selected to be a candidate in 2016, it was a simple twist of fate that saw her succeed in 2020. The decision of Sinn Féin’s Theresa Ferris, daughter of Martin Ferris, gave Foley a major boost in the Tralee area and saw her take the final seat in Kerry at the expense of the outgoing Fianna Fáil TD John Brassil.

Once in Leinster House, she was not included in the Fianna Fáil negotiating team for the programme for government, and many felt that it would be Anne Rabbitte who would make the jump up.

Her early days in office were fraught. Rookie errors were made, and Micheál Martin was seen both at Cabinet and publicly to be coming to her rescue.

An early joint press conference at the Department of Education around the Leaving Cert in 2020 made it look like “Daddy coming to the rescue”, as one minister put it.

A car-crash interview with the Sunday Independent in her early days didn’t help matters.

But as many sources have revealed, when the chips are down, Foley’s recipe to recover is to put the head down and work hard.

Despite the early missteps, she got the Leaving Cert delivered in 2020, notwithstanding a coding error that impacted some grades, and she also got more than 1m children back to school that September.

At Cabinet, she is not a frequent contributor, nor is she in the national media.

As others comment, however, she has used that to her advantage. When she pops up in the media, she’s competent and rarely drops the ball.

Ministers from other parties say she is a solid minister, courteous, but like her former council colleagues say, she doesn’t let anyone in. There is a sense no one knows the real Norma.

They give her credit for getting the schools back open this Christmas against the odds and avoiding the disaster of January 2021 when unions twice scuppered her plans to get kids back into the classroom.

Her Cabinet colleagues also recognise she is well served by a “very solid” team of advisors behind her.

Former journalist Eoin Murphy has proven effective as her public mouthpiece and Aine Doyle is seen as crucial as Foley’s policy brain and gatekeeper.

A major public spat with the union leadership ensued when she accused John Boyle of the INTO of being “incredibly disingenuous” for denying that his union told its members to not show up for school.

Schools remained closed until April, but after the spat, Foley picked up the phone and mended fences and set about finding a solution.

She was criticised for “going missing”, but sources tell me her preference is always to have the solution in hand before commenting. “That might work at local level, but the white heat of national politics is different,” one more senior minister said.

On the negatives, Cabinet colleagues say she can be “too tribal” in her dealings, and has to be reminded to share the love with Fine Gael and Green colleagues.

“She is dripping Fianna Fáil, and sometimes she finds it hard to shake it off,” one colleague quips.

But importantly, she has garnered the trust of senior Cabinet colleagues and is said to work well with the likes of Paschal Donohoe, Michael McGrath, and Simon Harris — her counterpart in Higher Education.

Within her own party, opinion of her is more mixed. Many TDs and senators hold her in high respect and recognise her willingness to work hard and grind out results. Others are less favourable. They say getting an answer from her or her office on representations is near impossible.

My reporting on parliamentary party meetings has told me that access to services for children with disabilities is an issue where her colleagues have been left frustrated by her responses.

Even though she has a busy portfolio and has to be in Dublin for Cabinet and Dáil business, several sources say she is good at minding the home patch.

“She runs a military-like operation in Kerry, and is doing a very good job of being the minister for Kerry,” one ministerial colleague said.

Foley is no pushover, but few see her yet as being a contender for the leadership of her party. To many, her style is too traditional to be effective as the symbol of progress which is needed to be the leader to rescue the party.

Also, many both in her party and around the Cabinet table question whether she has the vision to deliver the much-needed reform of the Leaving Certificate.

It is fair to say that she has not disgraced herself in Cabinet, and has proven herself able to be a solid player at the top level in Irish politics.

The big question is whether Foley can prove she actually has a vision of reform beyond the outdated status quo.