By Helen Riddell
AFTER 42 years employed as the clerical officer at Scoil Phobail Bheara, Margaret Power is looking forward to a well-earned retirement.
Margaret joined the school on August 19th 1980 as a clerical officer, running the office and over the years has seen the administrative side of the school undergo major changes.
‘It’s been a technological revolution from what was there when I started, to what the school has now,’ she said.
Margaret recalls in the early years, when a phone call had to be made to the Department of Education in Dublin it first necessitated dialling through to the Post Office in Castletownbere to get an outside phone line.
‘In that time there were only a few lines in Beara, so you were very lucky if you could get hold of a line when you needed it,’ she said.
In 1990 each school in the country was given one computer from the Department of Education. Margaret remembers there was great excitement at the time, ‘but then this huge box arrived, it was like a bomb, it just sat in the office for over a week before we ventured to open it and work our way through the instruction book. We had to teach ourselves how to use it.’
Over the years the technology improved considerably, and at the outset of the Covid pandemic, Margaret said the school found themselves more than adequately equipped to cope with remote learning.
‘Being in such a remote area anyway, as new technology came into the schools, we were always ready and willing to adapt and had the right calibre of people to push it, so that when the pandemic escalated and schools closed we were already geared for remote learning and were ahead of a lot of places.’
During her time at the school, Margaret has worked with six principals. Current principal, Pauline Hurley said Margaret would be sorely missed. ‘The role of the clerical officer is vital to the running of the school, and Margaret has been the backbone of our school, we’re all going to miss her.’
The staff and students made a number of presentations to Margaret to mark her retirement. She said she has no immediate plans just yet.
‘I’m just letting it all sink in and will take every day as it comes. I have great memories and I am very proud to have been an employee of Scoil Phobail Bheara. I enjoyed every single day that I went into work, and worked with the best colleagues over the years.’
