Minister Micheál Martin pays Tribute to Dr. Patrick Hillery

On Friday 4^th November 2005

President Brady. Distinguished Guests. Ladies and Gentlemen.

I would like to thank the President for his kind words of introduction and to say that it is a privilege to have been asked to speak on the remarkable career and contribution of Patrick Hillery.

Shortly after I was appointed Minister for Education & Science I had the good fortune to meet Dr Hillery at a dinner in Dublin Castle. Like most people, I had associated him chiefly with the time he served our country with great dignity as our President and, of course, with that iconic image of the signing of our Treaty of Accession to the then European Economic Community. It did not take long in our conversation before I realised that the breadth and depth of his experience in various public offices was extraordinary.

I believe that an examination of the record of Patrick Hillery justifies saying that he has had a major and uniformly positive impact on the social, economic and institutional history of Ireland. He deserves to be seen as one of the architects of Modern Ireland – both a leader of change and a force for stability.

Patrick Hillery entered Dáil Eireann at the age of 28 as the constituency colleague of Eamon de Valera. When de Valera was elected to the Presidency in 1959, Seán Lemass, appointed him to serve as Minister for Education. Lemass’ government had an extraordinary energy and enthusiasm for change the lasting benefits of which we can see throughout our country.

In the Department of Education Patrick Hillery inherited an agenda distinguished mostly by many creative justifications for the continuation of an actively exclusionary system. At second and third-levels in particular, the overwhelming majority of the population was given no opportunity to participate. Such debate as there was often involved the idea that expanding participation would be wasteful given the then level of demand for better educated persons.

The new Minister, with the full backing of his Taoiseach, wasted no time in formally burying this agenda when he said categorically:

“..if we are to overcome the degree of underdevelopment at which we find ourselves we must have more and more education”

What his subsequent actions show is not just a commitment to a radical expansion in participation at every level of education, but a progressive policy to expand the range and quality of opportunity which remains one of the core strengths of education in this country.

A good opportunity of showing the different elements of this policy is to quote from a fascinating speech of his in the Dáil. It could be said that we would not be sitting here this evening were it not for Patrick Hillery as it was he who brought the seemingly interminable debate about UCD’s future to an end by obtaining the approval of both the Government and the Oireachtas to Michael Tierney’s visionary plan for a Belfield campus. His nephew Michael McDowell will forgive me if I make the slightly partisan point that the last thing Tierney, a former Cumann na nGaedheal Deputy, expected was to have to wait for a Fianna Fáil government to have his plan fully supported.

The occasion of introducing the token Estimate to allow the first major construction in Belfield provided Patrick Hillery with an opportunity to speak at length about almost the full range of major educational issues. Addressing the House at the start of the Second Stage debate on March 23^rd 1960, he was clearly intent on marking a decisive shift in public policy.

His speech set, what was for the time, an unusual context for a Dáil by the use of extensive examples of international practice in order to evaluate existing policy. He argued that Ireland must consider the development of higher education in recent decades. He said:

To put the thing in a nutshell, the universities of the world, many of which had spent centuries in a semi slumber, have, in a few short years…been thrust…into the forefront of national, and indeed international endeavour, and have thereby attained an importance which has not been theirs since the end of the Middle Ages.

In response to the argument that Ireland was too poor to afford expanding the sector, or indeed that it was already producing too many graduates, he said, quite simply, “this is a calculated risk we must take if we believe that the country has a future.”

The new policy was to involve the support of expansion in university places, but also the introduction of an entirely new type of higher education. In his speech he identified what he called “a missing rung in our educational ladder” which denied progress to those who were more vocationally oriented. This idea eventually led to the creation of the Regional Technical Colleges, now called the Institutes of Technology. The binary system of higher education of which he is one of the principal originators has been central to the achievement of mass participation in higher education. It also continues to be identified by the OECD amongst others as a core strength of higher education in this country.

Having set a course for the expansion of places and types of provision at third-level, Patrick Hillery then talked about the other parts of the system, in particular what he felt to be a regressive approach to second-level education. For him, the objective was very clear:

Every child of sufficient talent, be they poor or rich, in any type of school should have the opportunity of climbing right to the top of the educational ladder. The nation needs the services of all the talent it can find.

He set a course against systems which divided children between different types of schools at 12, saying that such systems tend to:

crystallise schooling, and so society, at an early age into two classes, the professional and the strictly technical, with little or no hope of escape from the strictly technical class for the boy or girl who has once been segregated. I would think that any dividing line of the sort, if it must be, should not take place till the age of about 17 or 18, and that at that point there should be a channel for the really good and determined higher technical student [to reach degree level]

These were radical words and they were soon turned into action. His creation of the Comprehensive school sector showed the way forward for a diversity of curricular provision under a single school roof. Even more radically, the school leaving age was raised and the process of constructing the case for free second-level education was pushed forward.

By rejecting a “one-size-fits-all” policy in relation to the second-level curriculum, but also insisting on maximising choice at appropriate ages, Patrick Hillery ensured that Ireland avoided many of the worst mistakes in educational innovation seen throughout the developed world. In fact, educational research in other countries is almost unanimous in supporting the key principles which he set out for Ireland in 1960.

In this debate his opposition counterpart was James Dillon – a politician renowned for his ability to speak with eloquence on almost any topic with little advance notice. However, in reply to such a speech, he thought it necessary to say to the House that he “could not reasonably be expected to respond to the breadth” of the Minister’s comments.

Were it only for his time in the Department of Education, Patrick Hillery would be deserving of this evening’s honour, however he was to continue to make a major contribution in other roles.

As the first Minister for Labour since the Treaty, he implemented a policy founded on the idea that the state could play a major role in helping people to obtain the skills to avoid or climb out of unemployment. Today these policies are more grandly referred to as ‘active labour market initiatives’ – but their impact remains the same, which is to extend real opportunity to people who might otherwise get stuck in a permanent cycle of unemployment.

At the Department of Industry and Commerce, he pushed forward with an agenda to try and make Ireland more open and innovative – a first and major step towards creating an economy which could genuinely prosper.

As Minister for Foreign Affairs he completed a ministerial career which was shorter than many, but remarkable in terms of its long-term impact. He played a steady and determined role in responding to the growing violence in Northern Ireland at a time when this was most needed. I have long believed that it is really only those who were intimately involved who can fully understand the dramatic pressures which they clearly faced. However there is no doubt that their resolve helped stabilise politics in this jurisdiction.

It is, of course, for the negotiation of our Treaty of Accession to the European Economic Community that Patrick Hillery’s ministerial career is best known. This was a momentous step in the transformation of our country. What was particularly important was the way in which a genuine public consensus was developed, and a broader European identity was presented as something reinforcing rather than challenging our national identity.

It was this spirit which enabled us to be constructive Europeans who avoided the destructive and repetitive debates seen in some other countries and also to maximise the benefits which we could derive at the Council table.

Of course a consensus often leads to complacency and the defeat of the first Nice Treaty referendum was very clearly the product of such complacency. It is noteworthy that 12 years after leaving public office, and almost thirty years after helping to steer us towards participation in the great European project, Patrick Hillery was willing to make a notable contribution towards the successful outcome of the second referendum.

He was an obvious choice to serve as our first Commissioner. Today the European Social Fund is viewed as a central part of the Union’s commitment to cohesion and development throughout Europe. The initiative and commitment of Patrick Hillery helped bring this about.

As a minister and commissioner he was consistently innovative and progressive. He was a modernising force who achieved many things in a short period. In accepting nomination to serve as our President, it was as a stabilising influence that he had his most significant impact. With his wife Maeve so ably assisting him, he ensured the institution of the Presidency retained the respect of the people. He was a dignified and humane President who represented our republic with grace and to great effect.

Patrick Hillery both represents and is a major figure in a generation which decided that Ireland did not have to accept unemployment and emigration as an inevitable part of our national reality. He was an essential part in mapping a future where education would be the route of opportunity for people. He put in place a range of schemes, both as a Minister and a Commissioner, which established the principle that everyone should have a chance. He was also a leader in setting us towards an open and self-confident attitude to the world, rather than an inward-looking and defensive one.

This is the generation which has most spectacularly benefited from the wisdom of these decisions.

Back in 1960, as he asked Dáil Eireann to provide a symbolic £10 to begin the construction of this campus at a time when graduates were emigrating, he said it was a calculated risk which they should take if they believed that this country had a future.

Today we can see around us the future which Patrick Hillery helped to create. This is a country which still faces problems, but which are in no way comparable by those which have already been overcome.

Ireland owes Patrick Hillery its gratitude and its respect – and this evening’s award is a deeply merited demonstration of this.

ENDS

ETE 1448