Free Just Mary by Mary O'Rourke Page A

was the proposal to change the PTR , leaving each teacher responsible for more pupils than heretofore. This proposed measure became known as the infamous ‘20/87’ — a term which has never left my mind
and still provokes a degree of dread in me to this day. (Circular number 20 was issued by the Department of Education in 1987, detailing changes in PTR .) It was announced
that these strictures were to be imposed at primary, secondary and vocational level, and immediately huge uproar ensued. Of course I could not justify it on educational grounds, only on financial
ones and that was proving very difficult. Even now, 25 years later, the present government is finding it difficult to explain to people why there have to be financial cutbacks. It was extremely
sore indeed in 1987/88, and there were numerous talks and walks and a huge teacher gathering in Dublin, when the union members and others turned out in force to protest against the proposed change
in the PTR .
    A more vehement protest against the ‘20/87’ proposals developed back in my home town. One particular Saturday, over 12,000 parents, teachers and children marched up to my very
ordinary bungalow on my very ordinary road in Athlone, with banners and shouting and general clamour. As I watched, bemused, I found myself wondering whether this was to become a habitual Saturday
occurrence. At one point, Enda and my two sons suggested that they could give expression to their entrepreneurial spirit by setting up a homemade burger bar on the open green opposite the house,
but I quickly knocked that idea on the head!
    As well as the crowds of protestors, present on that occasion too were the then national reporters on education: Christina Murphy of
The Irish Times
, John Walshe of the
Irish
Independent
and Pat Holmes of the
Irish Press
as was. They were three great people on whom I would come to rely more and more, and who had always an unbiased, objective view of all
that was going on in the field of education. I remember how, on the evening of that day, when the marchers had dispersed, Enda cooked a big roast of pork with crackling in our house. Christina
Murphy and Pat Holmes had gone back to Dublin, but John Walshe was able to stay for a while to partake of the pork. The headline for the piece he ran following the protest was, ‘Mary is a
cut
above the rest’, which of course was a reference to the cuts in education and to what had gone on under previous Ministers — but I always privately took this too as a sign
that John had enjoyed Enda’s cooking! The same John Walshe is now Special Advisor to Ruairi Quinn, Minister for Education.
    The following week, I got a call from the Chairperson of Athlone Chamber of Commerce, who asked if they could please have another march soon, as the shops had done really well that day. Many of
the teachers were women, of course, and what would women do when they are in a strange town but go shopping! On a more serious note, the 12,000-strong crowd which invaded the streets of Athlone
that day was an indication of how high feelings were running at the time.
    But I held tough, as indeed we all did. I knew that my travails paled beside those of Rory O’Hanlon. Whatever the damage caused by cramming more pupils in under the tutelage of one
teacher, it would be an even more serious matter if patients could not get access to hospitals. Yet it was clear that drastic cutbacks were necessary. Of course as time went on and as I got to know
the Department better, I began to see where some cutbacks could have been made — not in an easier fashion — no cutback is ever easy — but perhaps more judiciously. Hindsight and
experience are great things. But for now, it was the
rí rá
, the
ruaille buaille
and the constant deputations and the continual talks.
    Fortunately, fate was to intervene in the shape of a mutual recognition by the unions and the government that the only way out of the dire financial circumstances in which we