A Tribute to Mary O'Rourke
Mary O’Rourke was a long standing supporter of Educate Together. As Minister for Education from 1987-1991, she was instrumental in the opening of Educate Together schools in Cork, Sligo, Kilkenny, Limerick, North Bay, Rathfarnham and Ranelagh. In this, she often had to confront opposition from within her department and from the established churches. ?She paved her own way and, in many ways, it was her interventions as Minister that enabled Educate Together to become a genuinely national movement - ?as up until 1987 only schools in the Dublin area had been allowed to open.
In her own inimicable turn of phrase she explained her attitude in her 2012 memoir "Just Mary":
"After all, how could anyone in their right mind be against such a worthy concept, that children of all faiths and none should come together in the primary school their parents wished them to attend, that ?they should learn to live together, and that their young minds would be opened to influences from all sides, never being required to fix on any particular one – at least, not until they were sufficiently mature to choose for themselves which, if any, to adopt?" (P66.)
In 1990, she addressed the annual meeting of Educate Together in Galway and launched the Educate Together Charter, which has become the prime document of aims and values for the whole movement.?
When in other ministerial posts and when a TD and Senator, she was always available to the organisation’s officers for advice and assistance in lobbying for educational change.
Later, when she was no longer in office, ?she served as a member of Educate Together’s Board of Directors from 2011 to 2017 and made invaluable contributions to the organisation’s fundraising, communications and lobbying efforts.?
Mary was always a reliable and warm-hearted friend. Straight speaking, well informed and with a personal intelligence nurtured by her own and her family’s political experience. ?
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In Educate Together archives there are numerous reports of her powerful interventions and I have many fond recollections of her kind words, her advice and steadfast support.
May she rest in peace and my deepest sympathies to all her family, friends and colleagues.