'Mick O'Leary is like the messer down the back of the class - and teachers should be able to take a joke'

I'm one of those people who thinks Michael O'Leary should be running the country.

The Mullingar man is my favourite Irish public figure, possibly the last one standing who is not afraid to say what he thinks and won't apologise for it.

The Ryanair boss is always right. I'm sure one day he'll be wrong, but he's been right on everything so far, from what I can see. He was right about buying homes for his airline's employees to rent at a reasonable rate amid the housing crisis. He was right about the pilots' strike being "industrial blackmail"; right about the passenger cap at Dublin Airport and drones causing disruption. And he was right last weekend when he joked about how there are too many teachers in the Dail.

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But Mick O'Leary is afflicted with a terrible condition called "having a sense of humour". And you can never joke about teachers.

In case you missed the furore over nothing, O'Leary made a crack about teachers-turned-politicians while launching the election campaign of Fine Gael's Peter Burke. It was a political joke for a political event and everyone actually got what he was saying, but had to pretend they didn't and be outraged instead.

Here's what he said: "The Dail is full of teachers. There's nothing wrong with teachers, I love teachers. But I wouldn't generally employ them to get things done."

Everyone laughed along, which is what you do at these things when someone brave enough to speak to a room full of people attempts some humour to lighten the mood. You'd swear O'Leary was dead serious and not having the craic, judging by the overcooked reaction.

Sinn Fein's Louise O'Reilly, who goes around in a state of permanent offence on behalf of other people, finger-wagged on social media: "Jesus wept. This is what Fine Gael think of teachers. Listen to them all laughing."

John Boyle, general secretary of the Irish National Teachers Organisation said it was "outrageous and deeply insulting" while Kieran Christie, gen-sec at the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland said it was "abominable nonsense, not acceptable". Why so touchy? Is it because everyone thinks while it's an important job, being a school teacher is a handy number, what with the neat hours, days off, long summer holidays and all the rest of it?

Like O'Leary, I think teachers are great, but their union chiefs are the primadonnas of the public service.

They're on multiples of the salary of working teachers, and they often don't represent the view of those on the ground. I haven't had any respect for them since they blocked the re-opening of schools for the small percentage of kids with special needs, during the pandemic.

The Irish Times got itself into moral contortions over O'Leary, with one unreadable piece noting about the audience: "By the time O'Leary delivered the comedic coup de grace... they were in the grip of rising paroxysm of pro-business hilarity." What?

It was literally A JOKE. If O'Leary had made a similar gag about journalists, I would have thought it was amusing. I'm sure a lot of teachers didn't mind the teasing, knowing it was poking fun at the ones who have turned to politics, such as Norma Foley, Michael Martin, and Catherine Martin, not those in the classroom.

Any teacher I know is too sensible to pay attention to the likes of O'Leary, who is an equal opportunity offender with a gift for controversy. FYI: He wasn't serious either when he said cyclists, environmentalists and travel agents should be shot.

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