Batt O’Keefe on matters various including a man who has ‘great humanity in him; outstanding humanity’

It’s odd about Batt O’Keefe. Many of those of us who remember the day he became Minister of Education and saw the response in the Dáil chamber, clearly unforced, from his colleagues both in Government and Opposition – a response that was entirely welcoming and went on… and on… and on for minutes, seriously, have followed his subsequent trajectory with some bemusement. For it’s almost as if, carried along on that initial tide of goodwill, our Batt has determined that his role must be to reverse it and assume the role of toughest kid in the class. Or somesuch.

The indefatigable Jason O’Toole has interviewed him for the Daily Mail (and by the way, is he our only political interviewer at the moment… to judge from the newspaper media he surely seems to be). So what is O’Keefe up to?

Well, as the article notes, first up the Green Party are unlikely to be impressed by his assertion that:

university fees are certain to be be introduced after 2012.
The minister attempted to bring in fees last year but was thwarted by the Green Party, which said the move violated the programme for government it had negotiated to remain in the Government. Now, in an apparent snub to the Greens, Mr O’Keeffe told the Irish Mail on Sunday in an exclusive interview that he ‘absolutely’ believes fees will be introduced after 2012 when the next Government is formed.

Of course, post 2012 is going to be a different era, and God bless him his optimism, if not his policy.

Speaking on the fees issue, he said: ‘I am convinced that in the future they will form part and parcel [of third-level education].
Looking at funding into the future, I’m in favour of introducing a system of fees or loans for students. ‘I had a report completed and
that report has now been transferred to the Higher Education Authority for them to examine it in detail and for them to make
recommendations in relation to funding in the future.’
So why did the minister introduce the issue last year when he knew his party had already promised not to introduce fees?

Yes, indeed. Why?

‘When I embarked on this, I was aware that it was not Government policy. Yet, in spite of that, I said I’m going to have a proper study done to see exactly where we are, what we’re doing and how we’re going to fund third level in the future.
‘When I started, there were 33,000 millionaires in 2007 and I said, “Why should we as a people be paying for their sons and
daughters to be going to college?” – it didn’t make sense.’

And yet precisely the same argument could be made about education at 2nd and primary level. More importantly the obvious riposte is that progressive taxation, by taking more from those on increasingly higher incomes, should be the mechanism whereby we can pull in sufficient funding in order to cover the social expenditure, and not just in education. If O’Keefe has some problem with ‘millionaires’ being able to send their sons and daughters, who – as an aside, are mainly over 18 and therefore should in all fairness be dealt with as individuals in their own right, it’s not as if there are no mechanisms to address this.

While I’m a little more open to loans or repayments subsequently during a career, that too seems to be merely an attempt to monetise a process which doesn’t need it. There’s little doubt, judge yourself the focus by the Sunday Times this last weekend on educational rankings where the yardstick used was entry to not just Third Level, but to ‘universities’, that those who go into further education after secondary have in general higher incomes. How to claw some of that back? Why taxation again.

What fees do is to introduce a transactional aspect, to differentiate at the basic level between those who pay them and those who don’t, to further reinforce a sense of third level as other, literally as ‘academic’ amongst those who see a greater need to enter the workforce as soon as is possible rather than playing a long game. We are told that the effect of removing them has not yet manifested itself in terms of greater take-up of places by students outside the middle classes. Hardly a surprise given that such a societal change will take time.

None of this rocket science. Other states manage, and moreover the philosophical issue, one where education – at whatever level, isn’t just seen as an issue regarding the individual but as a collective good, paid for collectively, seems a world away from O’Keefe’s thinking. In all of this there is no sense that O’Keefe has thought deeply, if at all, about what education at third level means. No sense at all that he has any concerns about the class structures that manifest and remanifest themselves through third level education. Nothing.

And if one need an explanation for why Fianna Fáíl appear so hugely detached from their traditional support base one need only check out the paean of praise he directs at his boss…

When it comes to his position as minister, Mr O’Keeffe remains convinced that he backed the right horse when he befriended
Brian Cowen on the backbenches, despite the Taoiseach’s lacklustre performance to date. ‘Cowen would be the first man
to admit to himself that in the early stages he didn’t look at his own communications strategy.
Transforming from a ministerfor finance where you kind of stay in the background, whereas as Taoiseach you’re always at the
foreground’, he loyally said of his friend.
‘He has a lot of quality. He has great firepower. He has great resilience. He can take a lot of criticism. He can soak it up. I
think something that’s not really known about him is that there’s a great humanity in him; outstanding humanity.
‘I think his mental facilities will always place him at the head of most people because he’s one of the brightest politicians that I’ve
ever come across.’

Hmmmm

…and consider the fact that…

Mr O’Keeffe is part of the Taoiseach’s so-called ‘Bar Lobby’ clique whose drinking sessions in the Dáil bar are the stuff of
legend. But are the stories just a wild exaggeration? ‘Well, you know, the old perception went out. Sure, it made
great media reading… Certainly there’s no question we’d have a pint from time to time. ‘But I think the excesses of
drinking are not a reality.

Well, I know I feel better reading that!