Some 114 students graduated with a BSc (Business Information Systems) while a further 33 graduated with an MBS (MIS & Managerial Accounting). Also conferred were 165 students across a wide range of disciplines which included BComm (European) with French; German; Irish; Italian; Spanish; BSc (Business & Financial Economics); BSc (Finance); BSc (Mutual & Credit Union Business); BSc (Government); MBS (Co-operative & Social Enterprise); MSc (Economics of Business Practice); MSc (Health Economics).
An Honorary MComm was conferred on Ms Kay Harte, Farmgate Restaurant & Café and Ms Claire Nash, Nash 19 Restaurant.
The Conferring Addresses were delivered by Dr Tom McCarthy, Chief Executive Officer, Irish Management Institute and Mr Brian Hayes, TD.
Opportunities for Arts and Commerce language graduates and the role they can play in Ireland’s export-led economic recovery can be demonstrated by graduates Claire Creedon (BComm (European) with Italian) who has begun a one-year placement with Bord Bia in Milan as part of the IBEC Export Orientation Programme, taking over the role of Eimear O’Mullane (BA Language & Cultural Studies – Italian, 2009) and Douglas Faughnan (BComm [European] with Italian) who has recently commenced a two-year placement in Milan with Enterprise Ireland.
Picture: Dr Edith Allen, Department of Restorative Dentistry who was conferred with a PhD on September 9th 2010 pictured with L-R Dr Michael Murphy, President, UCC, Professor Finbarr Allen, Dean, Cork University Dental School & Hospital and Professor Geraldine McCarthy, School of Nursing & Midwifery/Acting Head, College of Medicine & Health, UCC.
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Conferring Address by Mr Brian Hayes, TD, September 10th 2010, 12.30pm
President
University College Cork, Academic Staff, graduates, ladies and gentlemen. I
want to say what an honour it is to have been asked to speak at this conferring
here in UCC.
When an invitation was first extended to me, I was our party’s spokesperson on Education. It was probably a sensible move on the part of the college authorities to invite; what at the time may well have been a future Minister for Education. Well as they say a week is a very long time in politics. Given my involvement in the recent move against my party leader, I now find myself in cold storage as it were, a kind of political purgatory. On that basis the invitation of this college is most generous indeed.
Then I said to myself that UCC may well be trying to rub my nose in it, following Corks rather lucky win against Dublin recently. No seriously you deserved it; well certainly over Kerry any day.
Today is about recognising achievement and endurance. This University has always prided itself on its graduates. Today you join the thousands of UCC graduates who have left their mark on this country and on other countries all around the world. In graduating today you should be rightly proud of your achievements. As indeed I know your parents and families are.
When preparing these words I was advised by the college to be “congratulate, inspire and encourage” – a pretty tall order for a politician today. Yet what is needed in Ireland today is a new spirit which can encourage and inspire a new generation to bring this country forward. We badly need renewal. Your success in graduating today rekindles the optimism for all of us that better days lie ahead.
Great things can come from a time of crisis. The truth is that we have got to totally reinvent this country from top to bottom. It can be done. After the war, a Labour government in Britain under Clement Attlee, devised the national health care system that has stood the test of time and was established when Britain was debt ridden. In this country over a ten year period, over 900,000 jobs were created. Despite the current spike in unemployment, we still have 1.7million people at work.
You all know the bad news. You are I suspect, punch drunk from constantly hearing about the banking, credit and financial crisis. Graduating today is difficult.
But the prospects for this country are still good. Ireland needs the ingenuity and talents of people like you as never before. You have graduated in the area of Business and Law, with specialities in modern European Languages such as German, French, Italian and Spanish. The big success in recent years in employment terms has not been foreign direct investment, but the success of small Irish Enterprises who can win market share abroad. It is that enterprise culture that we need to foster in our schools and colleges.
The focus on Entrepreneurship within this College, through many under and post graduate courses, recognises the need to foster this enterprise culture. UCC more then any other Irish University has reached out to recognise the contribution of the international student to the role and purpose of a modern University. This college should be rightly proud of leading where others have still to follow.
I recently spent some time studying what Finland did in the early 1990s when they faced an economic crash similar to our own. The collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland’s main trading partner, saw GDP drop by more than 10% from 1991 to 1993. Unemployment went from 3% to 15% during the same period, Government debt escalated and, for good measure, a Finland banking crisis also emerged. Does any of this sound familiar?
Over a ten year period Finland went from being a basket case economy into a knowledge economy that is ranked internationally as one of the most competitive and sustainable economies within the OECD. Key to their success was a radical transformation of education policy based upon improving the quality and the status of the teaching profession.
Trying new things. Embracing change. Being prepared to reform, even our oldest institutions, is the only way out of our current difficulties. The day of a safe job over a lifetime of work is over. The really successful economies today invest in lifelong learning and believe that reinvention of systems, services and products makes their success sustainable.
Education cannot be seen as the preserve for people between the ages of 5 and 21. We need to radically alter our attitude to Irish Education. Getting people working together or collaborative learning; a feature of the new Primary curriculum, needs to be rooted in all aspects of Irish Education. Above all else education and industry need a much stronger chemistry, which doesn’t impinge upon each others independence, but rather helps get the best results for all.
We cannot repeat the mistake of the 1980’s; we cannot have another lost generation. Investment in our people must have a higher priority then investment in infrastructure or even defunct banks.
As part of a national response to the jobs crisis I am now proposing the immediate introduction of an emergency 2 year National Internship Programme for 18-25 year olds along the following lines. The Programme should have an initial timescale of 2 years. Graduates to be paid an allowance –tax free and not subject to PRSI. Insurance costs associated with the scheme should be borne centrally.
The Scheme should be open to all public, private and NGOs here in Ireland. The idea is that where an internship was made available and where the relevant skills of the interns were matched to those organisations, that 100% of the costs could be recouped. In the case of private businesses and SMEs a figure of 80% recouping might apply. Registered Charities, NGOs, Community Development groups, Universities, SMEs, Schools, the Semi State Sector, Local Authorities; amongst others could all benefit under such a proposal.
The aim of this scheme is to prevent mass unemployment among young people as the economic situation deteriorates. It will also lessen the economic and social consequences of unemployment. It will show solidarity with young people in a time of crisis. It will also give young people work experience rather than having them on the dole. There is very strong international evidence that internship programmes can in many cases lead to full employment. This programme will also encourage employers and the wider community to respond in a creative way to the growing unemployment problem. At a time of high unemployment it places a strong emphasis of community and social development. This would of course cost money. But at least there are clear advantages for our society and for those young people who desperately need experience in their area of expertise.
Something radical is required. Too date the existing three schemes to assist graduate employment; have managed to provide about 1700 places nationally. This is simple not enough and a much bolder Programme needs to be established quickly. My message to the government and to industry is that a radical programme of graduate recruitment is needed to keep the best and brightest here in Ireland.
My message to you the graduates of UCC is never to give up. This is your country. You are the future. You are the talented people who have the capacity to give this country back its hope. Don’t give up on Ireland.
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Citation for Honorary Degree of Master of Commerce, Claire Nash, September 10th 2010, 12.30pm
Picture, if you will, a scruffy 13
year old, her face caked in mud making her way across the heavily carpeted floors
of Ballymaloe house and asking for Myrtle Allen who when she saw her visitor
was so amused that she agreed to
take her on, washing dishes in her kitchen. Just over ten years later in 1992
that visitor would open a restaurant that would become the eatery where Cork business
people would come to meet and discuss the business, political and sporting issues
of the day.
The scruffy 13 year old was Claire Nash from Pallasgreen in County Limerick. Her connection to Ballymaloe had come from her family’s spending every summer at “Árd na Húile strand near Garryvoe. Washing dishes for hours at a time would have been sufficient to discourage most young teenagers from a restaurant career, but not Claire Nash. Two years later she and a pal were running a cafe from Claire’s home and remarkably the café received a rave review from the Irish Times whose food critic was unaware that it was run by two fifteen year olds.
Claire attended Cathal Brugha Street and graduated with a degree in Hotel and Restaurant management from TCD. During those degree years Claire used every summer to deepen her knowledge of the restaurant business. Of those experiences, perhaps the most interesting was her trip to Detroit or “Motown “ - not for the music but to work in the main kitchen of the Ford Motor Company where every day 8 oz of the best fillet stake was minced to make a hamburger for Henry Ford III and where bicycles were used to travel from one end of the kitchen to the other.
Her experience at Fords gave her a much deeper understanding of how to work and manage in the restaurant business. This experience also gave her a great love for the US and the attitude to business there.
On graduation, Claire went to Atlanta Georgia and there worked for the Cherokee Town & Country Club as a manager. This club had a membership that was made up of the wealthy and super wealthy of Georgia. Perhaps, it was there that her extraordinary networking skills were honed to full effect for the first time. She met and dined with President Jimmy Carter and the legendary Senator Sam Nun sorted out her visa issues.
After five years the death of her father in a car accident caused Claire to have to return to Ireland and she decided to set up business in Cork with the business community as her targeted market.
She invested all of the money she had saved, borrowed from family and friends and also obtained a bank loan to finance the opening of her eponymous restaurant in Princes Street. One of her long term suppliers recalls meeting this very young person from Limerick and thinking “ she’s probably very naïve – wont last long in Cork” As he says “ Boy, was I wrong” on all scores.
Some 18 years later Claire’s restaurant is now established as the definitive business restaurant of Cork. If you want to meet your solicitor, your banker, or your engineer, your newspaper editor etc. the one place you can be sure to encounter them and possibly all at once is in Nash 19.
Opening a restaurant @ 7.30am and closing @ 5pm for five days of the week is a gamble. You must be certain that you are able to offer a quality of food and level of service that meets the needs of a notoriously fickle market – the business community. It is Claire’s commitment to quality food baked on her premises and her view of service as the fifth wheel that she attributes to the success of her business. Claire is strongly of the view that she is responsible for peoples’ diet and health on the basis that “I have been feeding many of them 3 times a day for almost 20 years”. She advocates that the best way to ensure quality is to use locally produced ingredients.
She believes strongly that successful restaurant owners are those whose primary passion and motivation is to provide as good a service as they can – as she puts it “if your food and service is top class you, if you are prudent in the decisions that you make and if you have a bit of luck then you can be successful.” And Claire has been successful. For example, in 2008 Nash 19 was awarded a quarterly award as Cork business of the year and in 2009 Claire was Declared Good Food Ireland’s Hostess of the YEAR based on the votes of her peers from all over Ireland.
Claire’s feeling of responsibility to her staff is tangible. She is a demanding manager who has an incredibly low staff turnover. Interestingly, she says that the Celtic Tiger was the greatest threat to the sustainability of her business – it made it difficult to get staff at rates that the food industry could afford and sustain.
Claire repays her perceived debt to Cork in a number of ways. She is a Director and former Chairperson of the Cork Business Association; she is a Director of the Cork Opera House. She is a member of the Recreation, Amenity and Culture Committee of the City Council and is a member of the friends of Marymount Hospice.
In a relatively short time Claire has come a very long way from that day in Ballymaloe house – she serves as a role model and a reminder for those of you graduating today. You too can achieve your goal of starting your own business . For her many contributions to the food business sector, to the general business community and to the overall life of this city, Claire Nash is worthy of the award of MComm (honoris causa).
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Citation for Honorary Degree of Master of Commerce, Kay Harte (née O'Brien), September 10th 2010, 12.30pm
Kay Harte(née O'Brien) is a proud
native of Youghal – that historic East Cork town – a town that was a famous
seat of learning as far back as the 15th century when the College of
Youghal was referred to as the University of the city of Youghal by Pope
Innocent V111.
Living in Youghal, Kay was shaped by the family in which she grew up.
Both her parents imbued her with a love of learning, through both formal and informal education and gave her a love of the visual and spoken arts that she continues to develop. It was the nuns of the Loreto convent who gave her the love and passion for music – an interest that has sustained her through her life.
It is clear that there was something cooking in the air of the O’ Brien household in Youghal as subsequently three of the five siblings pursued careers in the food industry. In that regard Kay credits her sister Máróg as her inspiration and as the person who instilled practical knowledge of the restaurant business in Kay and indeed it was Máróg who cajoled and encouraged Kay to start the Farmgate Restaurant in the English market.
But, first Kay after finishing school attempted to enter the food industry by baking cakes for the local supermarkets. As Kay describes it “I made beautiful sumptuous cakes that were spectacularly unsuccessful as a business”.
Kay then went to work for Maróg who gave her that business training and practical knowledge that later would enable Kay to produce beautiful food that would be spectacularly successful.
It was also at this time that Kay met and married Niall Harte who encouraged and continues to encourage Kay to pursue her dreams and to invest in herself and her beliefs. They have two children, Sarah – a writer and Rebecca who works in the Farmgate.
In the early 1990’s married and with two children Kay enrolled in a night-time degree course in sociology here in UCC. Before she commenced her final year of studies, the opportunity arose to start a restaurant. Her passion for food business won out and, in her early forties, Kay took some giant steps up the stairs of the English market and turned what had been an unattractive part of that market into a key focal point and one that has added immeasurably to the reputation of the market and indeed of the city.
Since opening her business in 1994, Kay has put into practice her philosophy on food.
She is a firm believer that food in its production, its cooking and its presentation is a central part of Irish culture. As Kay has stated “those who create delicious food out of sacks of potatoes and sacks of flour deserve to be recognised as key actors on the Irish cultural stage.”
Ireland’s food is both simple and sophisticated – and Kay is a strong advocate of using our own resources. Restaurants should use local producers because they can be certain of its quality and freshness and because of the multiplier effect that small businesses using local producers can have on the local economy.
For Kay there can be no resting on any laurels even if in her case those laurels are many. These include: 3 Bridgestone Guide awards, 3 Georgina Campbell awards and an Irish Times award.
Each year Kay together with four other business owners from the English market (all female) visit an international market searching for ideas and innovations that they can implement in their businesses. Together with her daughter Rebecca, she visits a European city to tour their cafes and restaurants.
It is this passion and vocation for the food business and commitment to quality and excellence that has made the Farmgate the focal point of the English market and the restaurant in Cork where you are most likely to see a Cork family sitting next to a family from the Continent engaging in pleasant discussions fuelled by delicious food. Like the Youghal lighthouse, the Farmgate has become an icon of the city of Cork. In striving for food excellence Kay has managed to create a space, an ethos and a scene that has become one of the top tourist attractions of the city of Cork.
One of Kay’s main ambitions now is to convince the Government and the public that owning a small business is something that should be seen as a worthy goal that young people should be encouraged to consider as a viable and noble career option. It has been estimated that well over 95 percent of the turnover of small businesses go to producers, employees and the Government. For her part Kay is always available to pass on her advice to young people trying to start in the food or any other business.
It is indeed appropriate and timely that Kay who forsook her BA studies here at UCC to pursue her passion for food should now be recognised by the university for the work that she has done for Cork, for the Irish food industry and for tourism and that she be awarded the degree of MComm (Honoris causa).
Ends
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