Mary O’Rourke ‘wanted to do things, to be involved, to have a voice’ — she succeeded

Fondly known as “Mammy” because of her homely demeanour, she is remembered as a progressive education minister, but less so for her time as public enterprise minister when, in 1999, she oversaw the privatisation of Telecom Éireann, the state phone company. Many of the 600,000 ordinary investors lost money when the share price plunged. But O’Rourke, who died last week in a Dublin nursing home at the age of 87, always defended her record — and some small investors later ruefully admitted that even if they lost money, it taught them a lesson that buying shares is…