Description
Transcript from interview with Prof. Mary O'Sullivan former student of the National College of Physical Education, 1972-1976. Inaugural Dean of the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, 2008-2014. Interview conducted on 20th January 2022 by Dr. Martin Walsh.
"Anyway, to make a long story short we then got a notification to say the building wasn’t going to be ready and that we would be decanting to the Brandon Hotel (Tralee County Kerry) which seemed absolutely exotic and exciting to us, but I worried about the cost of accommodation. They indicated that those who had been resident in Limerick and who had this extra cost would get a subsidy. So I remember something like it cost seven pounds at the time for bed and breakfast and evening meal at the Brandon Hotel and I remember probably three, four weeks in, the quality of the food was awful and I remember the two of the senior students....well what I would have described them as senior leaders of the group Arthur Twomey and Ciaran McFadden who comes up again in… actually in David Flemings book protested on our behalf, to the department and also to the hotel management and they indicated that we would be free to go and find our dinner elsewhere in Tralee town and that was a great win but really we won the battle but lost the war because we-our subsidy went back to sort of two fifty and it was much more expensive to buy your food outside than to have your food in hotel (Laughs). But yeah, in the hotel the men were on one floor and the women were on the other floor and the poor staff of NCPE am actually commuted between O’Connell Street Limerick where they were teaching the first cohort of students who had come together from other institutions. They had to come down to us and we would then also commute between Tralee and Killarney (County Kerry) because the only place you could find a swimming pool was in Killarney as they wanted to teach us to swim and how to teach swimming. So yeah, it was all exciting and brilliant and a great way to meet your peers. I mean we spent what ten twelve weeks there and so we got to know each other in ways you’d simply never be able to do today."
-Interview excerpt
