A difficult transfer test for Sinn Fein

Lindy McDowell

Lindy McDowell, Belfast Telegraph

Saturday, May 03, 2008

How do you solve a problem like Caitriona? That’s the question currently facing the hierarchy of Sinn Fein.

Whether they will admit it or not. Will they opt for selection and the transfer system — ie, select a replacement minister and transfer Ms Ruane off into the sidelines in a ‘team reshuffle’?

Or will they allow her to continue in her job despite the fact that an increasing number of people both inside the education system and without are now signalling a lack of confidence in her handling of the role?

It’s a tricky one. Particularly for a party that does not like to be seen to be making U-turns. Or giving in to outside pressure.

Move her and it looks like acceptance she — and indeed the party — got it wrong. Keep her and then have to deal with the fallout if, as many suspect, her soon-to-be released plans for the future of education come a cropper.

Earlier this week, Ms Ruane was pictured at some environmental meeting or other, smiling grimly and clutching a light bulb.

For a woman who has failed to shed light on what her intentions are as regards the education system it was in many ways an apt image.

How many education ministers does it take to change a light bulb? It will require a lengthy consultation period before we can tell you.

And even then we need another couple of weeks to get our thoughts together¿

The fact that you are fed up being kept in the dark about what will be facing your children — or in the case of teachers, your pupils — in the coming months is not going to prompt Caitriona to change that light bulb one bit quicker.

And when she does? Will we all be any clearer? This week’s press conference where she refused to be drawn on the matters that are of key and pressing concern to parents and educationalists in

Northern Ireland only further underlined Ms Ruane’s reputation as not the brightest light in the Sinn Fein ministerial team.

And her party will, of course, be acutely aware that her handling of this most crucial of decisions will reflect on Sinn Fein as a whole.

Two weeks from now she’s scheduled to reveal a plan for post-primary education that must be acceptable, workable and above all an improvement on a system that most people felt was actually delivering pretty well. At least she has created some consensus.

Since the Assembly got up and running it’s hard to think of any minister who has managed to attract such all-round, cross-community expressions of concern.

So far she has engendered confusion, anxiety, distrust and anger. Not bad going for someone who hasn’t actually revealed her plans yet.

On any terms it’s going to be a tough trick pulling this one back.

Whether her party bosses will continue to retain faith in Caitriona is anybody’s guess.

But if they don’t, they face the difficult job of putting a positive spin on moving her aside.

Testing times ahead then, for both the minister and her party.

But let’s spare our tears for those who face a more testing time still.

For the children, the parents and the teachers who will have to try to work a system which even at this late, late stage remains as much an unknown quantity as a sealed 11-plus paper.

As much a mystery as how to solve a problem like Caitriona