Galway/Mayo rivalry extends beyond football into GMIT!

Bradley Bytes – A Political Column with Dara Bradley 

The Gaelic football rivalry between neighbours Galway and Mayo is unmatched across the country.

Rivalries between Kerry and Cork in Munster, and Dublin and Meath in Leinster, no longer have the same intensity.

That’s partly because Cork and Meath aren’t the force they used to be; whereas Division One teams Galway and Mayo are fairly evenly matched.

And that rivalry was renewed last weekend in MacHale Park at the Connacht minor Gaelic football championship.

The rivalries, it seems, goes beyond the playing field, too, and is evident in Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT).

Kieran Mulvey, an industrial relations trouble-shooter, was drafted into GMIT as a ‘facilitator’ tasked with improving communications and trust at the third level institute.

Mr Mulvey, a former Labour Relations Commission chief, was hired to implement the 30 recommendations of a report into the challenges faced by the college’s Mayo campus.

The report was compiled by a working group convened in March 2017 by Education Minister Richard Bruton.

And what did Mulvey discover? He found there “seems to be a Mayo versus Galway perception out there”.

According to minutes of GMIT’s Governing Body meetings, Mulvey – who was paid around €28,000 – also felt “mistrust needs addressing”.

He apparently also told a meeting on the Galway campus late last year that “students on the Mayo Campus are positive” and he advised “targeted redundancies”. How job losses will improve trust at GMIT is anyone’s guess.

Choir, cocktail sausages and ‘positive culture’

Staff at GMIT were invited to a Summer barbeque, which was due to take place last night (Thursday) . . .

For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.