When my sister, who is a year older than me, started school at the age of four, I was wildly envious. I decided to join her and literally ran away from home to school when I was only three years of age. At that time we were living in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, and the nuns at the Presentation Convent allowed me to stay.

I adored school so much that I remained in education until I came to work in Aras an Uachtarain. I wasn't a conventional student though. I was as lazy as sin and I have the academic qualifications to prove it. I did only as much work as was necessary to scrape through - I got what I needed but no more. It wasn't until I did postgraduate work that I achieved really good results.

At school I used to get away with murder. I was always playing pranks. In the school photo I'd be the one without a uniform or wearing someone else's glasses.

After a year at the school in Cahirciveen my family moved to Dublin and I started at the Dominican College in Eccles Street, where I completed both my primary and second-level education. The Dominicans were wonderful. They were genuinely more interested in education in its truest sense than they were in exams.

One incident stands out in my mind. I went as a boarder in my last Leaving Cert year. I remember asking the mistress of studies if I could stay up late to watch a TV programme about Samuel Beckett which started at 11 p.m. I was told no - I had to go to bed like every one else at 9 p.m. But 15 minutes before the programme started a nun came to wake me so that I could watch it.

History and chemistry were the only two subjects in which I got honours in the Leaving Cert. Our science teacher, Margaret Hannon, had a huge influence on me. She encouraged me to study science at UCD and become a science teacher. I remember being quite shocked when she had to leave teaching in order to get married - it was 1966 and the marriage bar was still in effect.

Maggie Shaw had to be in her eighties when she taught us history. She used to talk to us about the 1920s. She had lived through those times and she made it all so real for us. It wasn't like history. These two women brought home to me the impact an individual teacher can have.

Bride Rosney was special advisor to President Robinson. She was in conversation with Yvonne Healy.