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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
July 2021 53
Norma Foley is lucky, over-confident, mediocre
and visionless so she will be in running to
succeed Micheál Martin
N
ORMA FOLEY appears to consider
herself special. And sure why
wouldn’t she. She is one of those
politicians for whom, should a slice
of Kerry Golded bread topple from
her plate, it would never land butter side down.
She became Minister for Education in June
2020, almost by mistake; mainly because of the
stunning absence of talent in the Fianna Fáil
parliamentary party but also because of tempo-
rary Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s penchant for
surrounding himself with yes-people who are
no discernible threat to his own supremacy over
the fifteen-per-cent-party Fianna Fáil has
become. Having failed to secure a seat at every
general election since 2002 or a place on the
ticket in Kerry for the 2020 general election,
Norma was imposed as a candidate by the
Fianna Fáil national executive i.e. by the good
graces of Micheál Martin and his wife, who is,
one understands, quite ambitious on Micheál’s
behalf. Then, having scratched into the last
seat, at the expense of her party colleague John
Brassil, on her first day in the Dáil, Foley – after
proposing her party leader Micheál Martin as
Taoiseach – found herself elevated to cabinet
– and the Education portfolio at that – a crucial
one in this time of plague.
Ms Foley carries herself as if she believes that
this is not some grotesque piece of luck on her
part i.e. that she combined just the right amount
of mediocrity with being in the required place
at the required moment in history. No. Norma
acts as if her becoming Minister for Education
was as natural, and inevitable, an occurrence
Norma
People
By Kevin Higgins
She became Minister in June 2020, almost
by mistake: mainly because of the stunning
absence of talent in the Fianna Fáil
parliamentary party.
as Peter III being crowned Emperor of Russia.
Given she worked as a secondary school
teacher before being elected to the Dáil, one
could have hoped that Foley might have at least
lent a sympathetic ear to the entirely valid
safety concerns expressed by teachers, and all
of their trade unions: the ASTI, TUI, the INTO,
and FÓRSA. Not a bit of it. During the protracted
negotiations about a return to school, Foley at
times sounded like a pearl-necklaced version
of Norman Tebbit. Always eager to bash the
unions, Foley’s interventions encouraged the
worst of those Vichy/collaborationist ‘parents’
groups who emerge on Twitter whenever teach-
ers take any sort of industrial action. On a
couple of occasions Foley clearly had to be muz
-
zled by the temporary Taoiseach’s handlers for
fear her interventions might wreck the negotia
-
tions entirely. In one fractious outing in January
she said claims by the INTO that it did not
instruct its members to stay out of schools were
“incredibly disingenuous”.
While Foley’s anti teachers’ unions stance,
and general inexplicable air of prim poshness,
makes her the sort of Fianna Fáiler most likely
to appeal to Fine Gael voters with the bluest of
blouses, she is of the best Fianna Fáil pedigree.
Her dad, Denis Foley, having proved himself,
during the latter part of his tenure as TD for the
Kerry North constituency, to be a man whose
neck contained sucient meat to construct
another Pádraig Flynn and still have plenty left
over. Foley Snr was a member of the Dáil Public
Accounts Committee, in which capacity he was
involved in questioning an ocial of the now
notorious Ansbacher Bank. He resigned from
the committee and, eventually, from Fianna Fáil,
when it was revealed that he himself held an
undeclared deposit in the same bank for the
purposes of evading tax. In May 2000, Denis
Foley became the first TD to receive a penalty
for breaching the Ethics in Public Oce Act
1995 and was suspended from the Dáil for 14
days. Apart from its ignominious finish, Foley
Snr’s political career was featherweight and
passed mostly without notice.
Norma has inherited the unshakeable convic-
tion of her late father but her ambitions greatly
outstrip his. Since her appointment to cabinet
she has shown that she is, most definitely,
“ready for her close up, Mr DeMille”. Foley
shares with her Fine Gael colleague Hildegarde
Naughton the fact that a certain kind of Irish
Independent reader tends to attribute to her a
degree of substance of which, as of yet, there’s
absolutely no evidence.
On education she seems not to be an original
thinker. Unsurprisingly she told the Catholic Pri-
mary Schools Management Association in a
typically smile-some recorded performance in
late May that there’s new-found “positivity” to
Education as we emerge from Covid. She
believes there is a pressing need to bring the
Leaving Certificate and senior cycle “forward
into the 21st century”. She considers “there is
a huge body of work to be done in reimagining
senior cycle going forward”. It’s that impressive
word “forward” again.
This forward look creates an imperative - not
one that will be alien to her civil servants – of
more continuous assessment and a shift away
from the current pre-college academic orienta
-
tion to allow more vocational options. As to her
vision of an ideal Education we have heard
nothing.
If current polling is anywhere near right, she
will be swept out of the Dáil in the next election.
In the meantime, Norma no doubt harbours
dreams of succeeding temporary Taoiseach
Martin as leader of Fianna Fáil when he’s finally
flushed down the U-bend of history, as he soon
must be.
POLITICS
