On Monday evening, January 29th over 100 colleagues of retired Director of IUA Michael McGrath came together to celebrate his long and distinguished career spanning over 40 years.
Speaking at the reception, John Hegarty, President of IUA, commented on the many significant events and landmarks in education, helped along by the behind the scenes toiling at IUA, and by Michael’s straight forward approach.
 |
 |
| Brigid McManus, Secretary General Dept of Education with Michael McGrath | Caroline Nash, IBEC, Lewis Purser - IUA, John Lynch - IEBI and Attracta Halpin - NUI |
In a letter to Michael, written by Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin T.D., she praised Michael’s work in education,
"Your ten years as Director of the Irish Universities Association (and the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities) have coincided with a period of enormous growth and development in Irish higher education. The profile, scope and scale of activity across our seven universities has evolved considerably over that time as they opened up new opportunities for higher education participation, responded to the skills needs of the economy and society, pursued a collective commitment to quality improvement and provided a basis for the international excellence in research and development that we are now building. The significant strides that have been achieved over those ten years would not have been possible without the collective strategic purpose, collegiality and commitment to collaborative effort that was fostered by the work of CHIU and IUA under your guidance and leadership."
Responding to the kind words of both the Minister and Dr Hegarty, the following are extracts from Michael’s farewell speech:
I regard it as a privilege and I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the development of education provision over the last 40 years. I worked with some wonderful people whom I hold in the highest esteem. Those I respect most are high-minded and motivated mainly by a commitment to the improvement of education or other public service and not by personal gain. Where they sought advancement it was driven by a desire to better achieve improvements in service provision rather than by aspirations to higher office and feelings of greater self-importance. Simply put they want to do more rather than just want to be more.
My 10 years with the IUA have been remarkably rewarding and satisfying.
I am lucky that it has been an exciting period of phenomenal growth, change and development.
I am happy that in my own way I was able to play a part in the positive developments that took place and I thank the University Presidents and Senior Officers past and present for giving me the opportunity to work with them in helping them move universities centre stage in government policy, plans and investment.
I regard it as a real privilege to have worked closely with university presidents whom I’m sure history will rightly record as having, through challenging times, successfully steered the development of their universities as key drivers of the country’s recent and ongoing progress
I also thank and acknowledge the help and support and indeed tolerance and forbearance of colleagues in the HEA, SFI, NQAI, Departments of Education and Science, Enterprise Trade and Employment, Finance and the Taoiseach. I hope that I lived up to by belief that progress is best achieved in a spirit of partnership between the government, its agencies and the universities.
In fact I believe the country needs greater interaction at all levels between government and the universities. We urgently need to follow the example of other successful countries and put structures and mechanisms in place that will systematically tap into the vast expertise in the universities to develop evidence-based policies and promote the mutual exchange of staff between universities and government departments and agencies.
 |
 |
Roger Downer, former President of UL, Iggy O’Muircheartaigh, President NUI Galway |
Danny O’Hare, former President of DCU with Michael Murphy, President of UCC |
 |
 |
Pat Fottrell, former President of NUI Galway, Michael Mortell, former |
Michael with IUA staff members, Siobhan Harkin, Marguerita Lardner, Jennifer Cleary, Lia O’Sullivan and Celia Gallagher |
 |
|
Michael with Seamus Smyth, former President of NUI Maynooth
|