Superb, motherajasus!
So what DID prompt spin doctor supreme, Terry Prone’s, effusive reaction to a Department of Education chief inspector’s comments at a press conference?
PR GURU Terry Prone told the Department of Education that a press conference it held in response to the fallout from the Leaving Cert calculated grades debacle last year had been ‘superb, motherajasus’.
Ms Prone and her firm, The Communications Clinic, had been hired to help deal with the firestorm over the miscalculated marks.
The errors – affecting at least 8,000 grades – had been raised in the Dáil by Labour leader Alan Kelly in dramatic fashion before they were made public by the department.
Internal correspondence from the Department of Education reveals how Ms Prone advised Education Minister Norma Foley on how to handle publicity surrounding the miscalculations.
Ms Prone wrote: ‘The Minister might mildly point out, in response to any suggestions that she sat on it, that the level of support infrastructure for students (helpline etc) could not have been ready to go sooner than yesterday.
‘But it WAS all ready yesterday, vitiating [undermining or spoiling] any suggestion of being jumpstarted
‘You were stellar. Calm, expert, helpful...’
by Alan Kelly.’
Ms Prone also cautioned about ‘formal verbosity’ in one draft document which had the title Bloodyhell.doc and was sent with an email subject line of: ‘Ok, here goes my attempt to become a true hate figure.
‘The emendations on the enclosed relate to 1/ Points I can’t understand which might need re-configuration and 2/ Formal verbosity which is fine in-house but might be clipped for mainstream and social media.’
For another draft of a document, she texted to say: ‘Gone back to you with more than enough red ink to make you hate [me].’
Ms Prone was also generous in her praise of department chief inspector Harold Hislop who had dealt with questions at a department press conference.
One text message said: ‘Any chance of an email for Harold? Need to send fan mail.’
Another later text referred to her son Anton Savage, who also works with The Communications Clinic.
‘Anton wants to tell Harold how good he was and begs for his phone number.’
Ms Prone ultimately emailed Mr Hislop personally, saying: ‘I would never swear in the presence of so senior a civil servant, but Holy Sh**.
‘I’ve never seen something like this. Fair dues and congratulations – the capacity for an expert to make things simple is rare. The ability to do it with unpatronising enthusiasm even rarer.’
In another email with the subject line ‘late onset rock stardom’, she said: ‘You were stellar. Calm, expert, helpful, expository. You were the catalyst changing potentially hostile interrogation into a conversation about details – an almost audible click marked that transition.’
In response, Mr Hislop wrote: ‘Your advice seems to have helped!!’
He added: ‘I’m not sure what to think when one gets this reaction from the fourth estate [media].’
Large chunks of the records have been redacted by the Department of Education, a decision which is being appealed.
In one text,
Ms Prone wrote: ‘Just don’t want it political. I gather Simon’s [Harris] found spaces for all the students.’
The text appears to refer to an announcement by Higher Education Minister Simon Harris that extra third-level places would be available for any students whose CAO points might be affected by miscalculated grades.
The PR advice was followed in mid-October by an invoice for €19,481 for what were described as ‘crisis communications analysis, scriptwriting, conference simulation and on-call and online advice’. Ms Prone did not respond to a request for comment when asked about the records.
A Department of Education spokesperson said: ‘The Department engaged the services of The Communications Clinic to provide communications services to the Department from September 24, 2020 to October 3, 2020 to support the Calculated Grades’ projects.’
In 2017 Ms Prone apologised on The Late Late Show after she publicly criticised research carried out by historian Catherine Corless, who exposed the Tuam baby scandal.
Three years previously, Ms Prone told a French TV company the mass graves that are believed to contain the remains of up to 796 babies were more likely to contain ‘Famine victims’.
She subsequently apologised for her remarks and said she should have contacted Ms Corless.
Ms Prone said at the time: ‘I’m really sorry. Based on the evidence I believed they [graves] were Famine victims.’