‘Would you employ a teacher to run the Central Bank?’: Readers deeply divided on Michael O’Leary’s remarks

It is hard to imagine anyone who has taken even a passing interest in his 30-year career as chief executive at Ryanair will be surprised by this but reactions from Irish Times readers to Michael O’Leary’s comments on the number of teachers in the Dáil over the weekend suggest he has once again succeeded in deeply dividing opinion.
Fine Gael has found itself in a slightly awkward position since then, having to distance itself from an endorsement of one of its Ministers by a hugely successful and prominent businessmen. Our entirely unscientific poll suggests, however, there are quite a few people out there who would have been happy to see the party, like Mr O’Leary himself, double down on the comments. One thing to note, though, and take this how you will, a few of them seem to be related to teachers.
“The Dáil is the legislative assembly of the country yet the electorate has repeatedly returned teachers to a position in which they have no practical experience,” says Joseph Greally a retired engineer, businessman and, he acknowledges with a laugh that suggests he knows he might be in trouble for saying this, father of a teacher, based in Kildare.
“They are not legislators, economists, managers or financial experts,” he says. “The government budget is measured in tens of billions. If a private company was to employ people to run an enterprise of that scale, teachers wouldn’t feature highly on the list of suitable candidate.
“In my 50 years of business I’ve seen very few teachers with the ability to comprehend business or work to the level that is needed in this area. Teaching may not be so easy today but it is a vastly different task to being one of the people responsible for making the decisions and laws needed in this rapidly changing dangerous world. Before shooting Michael O’Leary down in flames ask yourself, would you employ a teacher to run the Central Bank? Probably not.”
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Ronan Furlong, the Dublin-based son of a teacher, believes Mr O’Leary “was making a general point about the lack of technical and business expertise in the Dáil and was 100 per cent correct to do so”.
“There are huge challenges facing the country around infrastructure, housing, health, and enterprise and innovation policy etc. However, there are relatively few professionals in Dáil Éireann with the requisite expertise and/or private sector know-how in areas like transport, renewable energy, construction or finance.
“Instead of the media and politicos taking offence at O’Leary’s remarks,” he says, “they’d all be better off having a serious debate about the underlying message.”
Carol Widger, a lawyer, says she doesn’t have an opinion one way or the other on whether teachers make good politicians but diversity is a good thing. “Public representatives should be representative of wider society and no one group should predominate,” she says. “As with the boards of public companies, we need diversity of thought and that comes from having decisions made by people with different backgrounds, a mix of gender, race and life experiences,” she says.
Ms Widger is not the only reader to express irritation that, whatever road took them to the current Dáil, our politicians did not have the collective expertise to avoid the bike shed or national children’s hospital controversies.
There were many other responses critical of Mr O’Leary’s take, though, with Rita O’Driscoll in Cork describing them as “naive”, observing that many teachers “inspire their pupils”, “navigate them through tough times with sensitivity and encouragement” and “impact their life trajectory”.
Stewart Kenny, another retired businessman, one who now works with people with ADHD, says for him, “If it’s a choice between Micheál Martin (ex-teacher) or Michael Lowry (ex-private sector business) I know which I will vote for. Michael O’Leary is welcome to a Dáil full of Elon Musks.”
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Richie MacLiam, who mixes teaching with running a couple of small businesses – rather playing into the hands of those readers who contend their hours, holidays and career break arrangements facilitate teachers’ entry into politics – suggests it was not so much Mr O’Leary’s comments as the reaction to them that is the problem.
“He’s certainly entitled to his views, whether or not they’re well-informed. More concerning, however, is Fine Gael’s response, which fell short. Ignoring the laughter in the room won’t make it disappear.”
Niamh Hatton, though, suspects those involved won’t be too concerned by all the controversy. “It’s not quite true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” she says, “but a lot more people know who’s running for Fine Gael in Longford-Westmeath now than would have if the campaign had been launched with the usual bland platitudes and been reported on in a short article way down the newsfeeds.”