
Broadcaster Andrea Gilligan on the Leaving: ‘There was very genuine fear I could fail the maths exam'
Andea Gilligan, broadcaster and presenter of Newstalk's Lunchtime Live, sat her Leaving Cert in Sligo Grammar School in 2003 and repeated it in 2004.
What is your most vivid Leaving Cert memory?
The weather. It was a fab summer and I remember leaving the exam hall each afternoon and heading back to the dorm (I boarded) and getting straight back into study.
Who was your most influential teacher and why?
READ MORE
There are two that stick out: my Irish teacher Mrs Connors and my business teacher Mrs O'Donnell. They were hugely encouraging and went above and beyond to help me.
What was your most difficult subject?
Maths. I was so poor at it. I remember there was very genuine fear that I could fail the exam. Thankfully, I didn't.
And your favourite?
History, geography, business studies. I was always much better at practical subjects.
Can you recall what grades or points you received?
Not the points, but I know I definitely got 2 A1s in business, and geography. I remember being very disappointed overall. I felt I should have done better.
How important were the results for you ultimately?
At the time, they were hugely important. They obviously dictate what you're going to be studying and where, to the extent that I changed my mind on my CAO form and ended up repeating my Leaving Cert.
What did you go on to do after secondary school?
I went to NUI Galway – now University of Galway – and did an arts degree (public and social policy). It was a denominated course, so you studied legal, economics and politics for the three years of the undergrad degree. I loved the course, and then I completed the masters in journalism at NUIG also.
What would you change about the Leaving Cert?
I think the A-level system in Northern Ireland is far superior – three subjects studied at a more in-depth level would likely suit more students. Also, I think continuous assessment and project work would alleviate a lot of pressure on students.
What advice would you give to your Leaving Cert self?
It's not the end of the world! My Leaving Cert plans look nothing like what I'm doing now. I changed career plans completely, and it's served me well! In fact, I couldn't be happier with the career I ended up in.
In conversation with Tony Clayton-Lea.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Irish Times
30 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Animal Farm – Frank McNally on how 'Skin-the-Goat' Fitzharris was radicalised by the killing of a fox
James 'Skin the Goat' Fitzharris (1833 – 1910), about whom we were talking here last week, was synonymous with an animal he supposedly turned into a rug after he caught it eating straw from his horse's collar. Less well known is how the death of another four-legged creature, back in the 1830s, may have helped send the infamous cab driver to the scene of the Phoenix Park Murders half a century later. I'm indebted for the story to reader Brian Garvey, whose wife has ancestral connections to Fitzharris's Sliabh Buidhe (aka Bhui), 'where a crow never flew over the head of an informer'. She inherited it as part of family lore. But it was written and first published in 1961 by the journalist and former Irish revolutionary, Commandant W.J. Brennan-Whitmore. READ MORE The latter was also from 'Slievebwee', as he spelt it, and his parents' house was the first that Skin-the-Goat visited on his return to Wexford circa 1899, upon release from penal servitude for his part in the 1882 conspiracy. Central to the story was James's father Andrew, an employee of a substantial farmer named Michael Sinnott, whose land was owned by the area's main landlord, the Earl of Courtown. 'One spring morning,' according to Brennan-Whitmore, 'Fitzharris was carting manure from the yard of his employer to the top of a field on Corrig Hill,' while his burdened mare 'zig-zagged' up the incline and Sinnott's large collie dog 'hunted the ditch'. When the mare stopped for a breather, as was her habit, Fitzharris paused too and lit his pipe. He and the dog then waited patiently for the mare to regather herself. Meanwhile, floating on the breeze, came the sound of the Island Fox Hunt (from Ferns), which was somewhere close by. The mare recovered, Fitzharris was about resume the climb when the unfortunate fox, fleeing one pack of hounds, hurdled the ditch and straight into the path of the collie, which promptly seized it. This was bad news for the fox, but also for Fitzharris. He was thrown into a panic, not from animal welfare concerns but because killing foxes in those days was the preserve of the gentry. A mere peasant who did it, especially mid-hunt, could be in big trouble. But despite his attempts to rescue it, the fox was soon dead. 'Terrified,' Fitzharris now looked all around him. There was no-one within sight, it seemed, so he carried the fox's carcase farther up the hill and flung it across the ditch into a dense heap of bushes and briars. When the hunt arrived and the hounds lost the scent, Fitzharris was asked which way the fox went. He pointed towards the mountain, the same Slievebwee, and the hunt rode on. The failure to pick up the scent would now be the dogs' fault, he thought. But a week later, as he was again working in the fields, his wife came running, distressed. They were being evicted, she said. Police and bailiffs had arrived and were throwing the family's belongings 'out on the roadside'. Fitzharris hurried to the scene and grabbed a fork before neighbours pacified him. Then, hearing from the sheriff that the eviction was on the earl's orders, Sinnott intervened: 'Good heavens man, you can't throw a young family out on the side of the road whose father did no wrong and who owes no rent.' Here the landlord's gamekeeper, a man named Rigley, spoke up to say that he had witnessed Fitzharris allow the collie to kill the fox. Hence the eviction, he explained. Fitzharris called him a 'damned liar,' but it was no use. The family was out, and forced to seek shelter that night in a barn owned by a relative. The vindictive landlord and his gamekeeper, however, were not having that either. Learning of the arrangement, they warned the sheltering tenant that if he did not 'put Fitzharris on the road', he would be evicted too. So next, the family sought refuge in a one-roomed hut on a property farmed by a Mr McDonald and owned by another, smaller landlord. The Earl then let it be known that he wanted Fitzharris out of there too. But the smaller landlord and the hut owner both stood up to him and the family remained. According to Brennan-Whitmore, this is where James Fitzharris and his brothers, whom he knew well, grew up: 'James turned into a sturdy stock of a man, processing a fund of humour, with a tendency to harmless devilment and an ability to make ballad poetry. While in jail, he composed a ballad to his 'Old Grey Mare'. I often heard him sing it.' Brennan-Whitmore had enlisted in the Royal Irish Regiment as a teenager, spending five years in India. The experience seems to have radicalised him. He left the British army in 1907 and became an ardent republican who fought in 1916 and later served in the Free State Army before retiring to be a writer. His 1961 account for the Evening Herald, was headlined: 'The authentic story of James Fitzharris, alias 'Skin-the-Goat''. The subhead read: 'His first taste of landlord tyranny as an infant.' As the author told it, the accidental killing of a fox and its consequences may have helped propel Fitzharris to the Phoenix Park one fateful afternoon in 1882.


Irish Independent
13 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Laura Lynott: Has the row over reducing calculated grades distracted from the Leaving Cert itself?
Has the row over the reduction in calculated grades distracted from the real purpose of the Leaving Cert?


Irish Times
14 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘I'm not going to do anything that isn't possible to do together': peacemaker Lord Eames celebrates 50 years since consecration
Fifty years on from his arrival in Derry as the city's Church of Irelan d bishop, Robin Eames , has vivid memories of two things: the suffering of the city on Bloody Sunday and its aftermath, and being reunited with the man who would go on to become a lifelong friend, his Catholic counterpart, Bishop Edward Daly. 'I broke with tradition and made history because, without realising it was the first and only time it had happened, I invited him to my consecration and he walked beside me,' Lord Eames said. 'That friendship and that hope image of what we wanted to do together took me through all the years of my service here, and Edward and I became very close friends and we did lots of things which were never publicised, but I hope were for the good of the people of this place. 'We treated each other as men, as people, forgot about the fabric of office ... We acted together.' READ MORE Speaking following a service in St Columb's Cathedral in Derry to mark the 50th anniversary of his consecration as Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, Lord Eames recalled going, at Bishop Daly's suggestion, 'into the Bogside all by myself and going from door to door simply saying look, 'I'm Robin Eames, the new Church of Ireland bishop, I just called to say hello, I'm glad to meet you.' 'It was there in one of those houses, when the door opened, and a hush fell over the conversation, and somebody walked through the door straight over to me with a hand outreached. 'He said simply, 'Welcome to Derry. I'm John Hume', and that was the meeting of two people who were to work together in the years to come.' In 1986, Lord Eames became Archbishop of Armagh and the head of the Church of Ireland; serving in this role from 1986 to 2006, he known for his work in peacebuilding and reconciliation, often, as in Derry, working in conjunction with his Catholic counterpart. He had been due to preach the sermon for Remembrance Day sermon in Enniskillen in 1987, a service that never took place. Eleven people died when an IRA bomb exploded at the town's cenotaph; Lord Eames spent the day in the hospital, and later wrote that the experiences of that day 'will never leave me.' As Church of Ireland primate he had a direct role in trying to resolve the Drumcree dispute of the mid-1990s, and in 1998 was an advocate for a 'yes' vote in the referendum on the Belfast Agreement . Throughout, his approach was inspired by his belief in human connections. 'It's what's always made sense to me in my ministry ... I have emphasised over and over again that I'm not going to do anything that isn't possible to do together. 'That's been the way of it, and I hope that's what people will remember when they bury me,' Lord Eames said. Following his retirement in 2006, Lord Eames became co-chair, along with Denis Bradley, of the Consultative Group on the Past, an independent group set up to examine how to deal with the legacy of the North's Troubles. Its recommendations included an independent commission to examine legacy cases over a five-year period, but it became embroiled in controversy after a plan for a £12,000 payment to victims' families was leaked, and its proposals were never adopted. 'That report, quite honestly, turned out to be before its time,' Lord Eames said. 'If there had been time before we published it, I think it might have had more effect. So much that has happened since could have been avoided ... But I don't regret one word of it.' To move forward, Ireland must 'look back on its past with humility' and acknowledge 'hurts have been inflicted on both sides'. 'If we can only have the humility to say yes, these things happened, but they've no part and place in our future,' he said. 'Let's learn from the past, let's learn from the mistakes. 'In Ireland we've so much going for us, so many opportunities, and if only we can be a generation that takes these opportunities, I believe the future is bright for us all.'