And everything that Mary did they couldn't land a blow.
used to rule on Education questions when she only had the bleatings of and the doe-eyed to bat away.
Time was when the three females formed a single-sex establishment and the convent-educated Ms Hanafin found herself effortlessly Head Girl. Truly the happiest days of the minister's life.
Oh dear. A few months into the new Dail sees Mary trying to find her feet in the rough and tumble of co-education. This means one quivering word -- boys! And nasty brutish boys at that. We mean the beastly () and the ruffian (Labour).
The boys want to torture the minister. Instead of sugar and spice and all things nice as in the days of Olwyn and 'jolly hockey sticks' Jan the boys are putting slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails under her desk.
Brian Hayes was being mean to her in the yard yesterday. And then his mate. Quinner the baldest -- sorry boldest -- boy in school came shoving over to be horrid as well. What's a girl to do?
Hateful Hayes had Mary stammering and staring at her shoes on a series of Education Questions.
The Minister was left claiming that a question that had featured on the census -- about school drop-out rates -- wasn't really relevant.
Perhaps she wished she'd feigned a tummy-ache that morning so she could have avoided going into the chamber at all. Hayes shouted that Mary was "trying to rubbish the independent figures provided by the after 10 years of using CSO statistics to show the achievements of her Department."
He said the had sought 50 additional officers to address increasing school drop-out numbers but the Department was prepared to give only 15. "The minister sets up the body refuses to fund it and then blames it and everybody else."
Mary stood up bravely chattering statistics in reply trying not to let the pressure fog her glasses. "So Mr Ward is wrong is he?" yelled Hayes naming the head of the welfare board. He yelled it a few times the poisonous meanie.
Quinn sauntered over. He had a question too. The minister answered it or more accurately this being didn't answer it at all. Quinner didn't simper and sit down to play with his doll as might have happened in the past. He got mad.
He cheeked Mary by reminding her of her time as a teacher in. "If I was replying to a question which she had set for me. I would be failed. The minister's answer is utterly irrelevant to my question."
Why had the minister not got details of a particular piece of school expenditure he wanted to know. "You are deliberately avoiding Parliamentary Questions in this House -- by answering every question that was not asked and not those that are.
"We have a function to hold ministers to account -- not to be a clapping applause machine for a public relations exercise."
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Related article:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/mary-quite-contrary-as-the-boldest--boys-in-school-are-horrid-to-her-1218803.html
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