Eddie Hoban - a story of success

Connaught Telegraph


"Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Fascium" is an old Latin phrase that translates "I shall either find a way or make one". This was the phrase that Eddie Hoban, the recently retired placement officer with FÁS, took with him from the Christian Brothers school in Westport, back in the 1940s. Making it his philosophy of life, it guided him through a varied and successful career.

Eddie Hoban presentation

Presentation to Eddie Hoban on the occassion of his retirement from FÁS showing Manulla Football Club represetives:
Left to right: P J Hennelly, Eddie Hoban, John Jennings, John Durkan


From the rail roads in the Australian outback, to County Cork, and in later years, Castlebar, Eddie says it was not the bending of rules, but the making of ways, that enabled him to so some of the things he did. An adept storyteller, with a friendly, if a little gruff personality, Eddie is a most accommodating and helpful person. His tales of bygone years enrapture any listener.

Eddie began life in a little village called Killeenacoff, which is about four miles outside Westport , out on the hills.

"The youngest of thirteen, I was born in a little thatched house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and flags on the floor. When I was about five, we moved to another house which is still there today. The family were never all together in the one house, the eldest girls having emigrated before I was born.

"I suppose looking back I remember how little we had. My father was a small farmer, with 10 or 11 acres. The people around us had nothing either. But they were great neighbours and we borrowed amongst ourselves to survive in the village. If we were short of milk we borrowed it from a neighbour and they came into our place and borrowed from us. Our doors were always open - we never locked the doors.

"I was the only one of the family who got a secondary education. I went to the Christian Brothers school in Westport, where I got the Leaving Cert in 1949. I must pay tribute to the Brothers because without them I would not have had an education at all.

"There were five of us in the Leaving Cert in the Brothers school in Westport in 1949. That number is now close to one hundred. The five consisted of myself, Des Beatty, Louis Kelly, Seamus Reilly, and a Fr. Michéal McGreal."
When he left school, Eddie sat for the County Council exam, was placed third on the panel, but on securing a permanent job in England, he never took up a position within the council.
"I often wonder as I walk around the streets of Castlebar where I would be in the Council today had I taken up a position there," he says.
After a year in London, he answered an advertisement in the newspaper looking for clerical staff for the Australian Railways.
"I had no intention of going out there but decided to write and see what they had to say. One thing led on to another, I got the map of Australia, came across the city of Adelaide and I said 'I'll go there'. I left for Australia in March of 1951 and I arrived in Adelaide in April."
He arrived in Adelaide, and standing forlorn in the Custom House, was approached by a member of staff who gave him the number of a boarding house.
"I remember that day distinctly because it was a Friday and in those days you couldn't eat meat on a Friday. I ate meat three times that day! Every time I had finished eating it I thought good God it's Friday."
He worked for nine months at the Suburban Railway Station and then moved to a place called Victor Harbour, where the River Murray enters the sea. He spent his 21st birthday there and to celebrate he bought himself a watch, which cost £21. He said:
"That was an enormous amount of money in those days, but I bought it anyway and it's still on my wrist today - forty-four years of perfect time keeping."
He returned to Ireland on his first visit in 1954 and his sister returned with him to Melbourne. He later studied accountancy at night school in Melbourne, qualified as a station master, and spent time on the relieving staff there.
"There are not many towns in the north east part of Victoria that I didn't work in at one time. I was a total of 16 years in Australia, spending my final two years as a personal assistant to the general manager in Melbourne.

"Meanwhile, I was determined to see my two sisters I had never met. So on my second visit home, I got on the ship in Sydney, came across to Auckland, up to Honolulu, right up into Vancouver, got a train to Niagara Falls and eventually made my way to Philadelphia. I was 27 when I met my two eldest sisters for the first time. The two of them had emigrated to America several years before I was born and never returned, although one of them did return many times subsequent to that. My oldest sister, Mae, never returned. She died last November."

"In late 1966 I came back to Ireland on another holiday and I remember I booked my journey to come back by rail through China. Then the Chinese and the Russians started a war on the border so I cancelled that. So I arranged to come up through India into Pakistan. And damn it if they didn't start a war over Kashmir! I cancelled that and took what was to be a long holiday on a ship, but I didn't really mind as I could remain on a ship forever. It took us six weeks and two days." That trip, took Eddie to Auckland, Suva, Honolulu, Pago Pago, up to Vancouver, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco, into Alcopulco in Mexico, through the Panama Canal, up to Miami, Bermuda and NASAU, across to Le Havre and then into Southampton.

"I came back to Ireland not knowing am I going to go back to Australia or not. I walked up and down O'Connell street all day with my resignation in my hand, and eventually posted it."

Eddie decided to go back to England and found employment within a few days. He spent eleven years working in personnel management with a company in London and became an associate member of the Institute of Personnel Managers. It was the experience he gained in London that got him the job in FÁS. While in England, Eddie met his wife Mary, who was from Cork, married and had three children fairly close to each other. They then decided to return to Ireland.
"I had no job over there, no house, no nothing, but I went with my wife and three children, and up off and away. We sold the house and Mary came over to Cork in July 1977. I stayed in London for a few months as the company asked me if I would fill in for somebody else, until Christmas."

RETURNED HOME

"I arrived in Cork on Christmas Eve 1977. I had no job and we were staying in a place called Ballincollig, which is five miles outside Cork. I started work in Cork on the third day of January, which was the first working day after Christmas. It was a job laying water pipes on the banks of the River Bandon, in a village called Ballineen. It was the coldest Winter that ever blew.

"We then decided to buy a house outside Middleton, in east Cork, so I had to give up my job on a Friday. We were packing our bags on the Sunday night before we moved when there was a knock on the door. It turned out to be a manager from a company called APC, to whom I had applied for a job. He was in charge of putting up a gas power station at Aherda and was looking for someone to do the recruitment of personnel and a costing programme. It was only for a year. He asked me what I had been doing on London. I pulled out my reference from the suitcase on the floor and handed it to him. Having read it he offered me the job without another question. I started work at half eight the following morning.

"Three weeks later I came home and there was a letter there from the Department of Labour inviting me for an interview as I had applied for a placement officer's position, with the National Manpower Service. It was a Government job and I remember my wife Mary, God rest her, saying to me you're wasting your time going for that as you won't get it and you'll lose a day's wages, a day going up and down to Dublin and you might lose your present job. I agreed with her and I got the letter, threw it in the bin. I started reading the paper and she went to bed. Whatever caused me to go to the bin, I pulled out the letter and thought they've given me an interview, so I'll go for it.

"Anyway, I got the job and was posted to Cork, with the National Manpower Service. Funny enough, when I had come back to Ireland on the Christmas Eve I went in to the National Manpower Service in Cork to register for a job and I was interviewed by a man called Campbell. When I started in that office, only six months later, I was sitting in his chair!"

LIFE WITH FÁS

Eddie came to Castlebar on the 9th of April, 1979, with the National Manpower Service. At the time their sole function was recruitment. "We were a sort of a marriage bureau between the employer and the job seeker," he says. "Then the Government brought in a system of work experience, where youngsters were put into work experience position at the cost of the National Manpower Service. There were also employment initiative schemes where grants were given to the people for taking on workers. We dealt with anything in the labour legislation area. The National Manpower Service, Anco (the old training agency), and the then Youth Employment Agency which catered for the under 25s, were amalgamated into one agency i.e. FÁS, ten years ago. The next scheme was the social employment scheme catering for everyone aged over 25 and not for those younger than that.
He said: "Community employment schemes have a training element for the participants who must be unemployed. Up to 40,000 people are involved in these schemes around the country. There are 1,100 people from the Castlebar area on these schemes, by far the most number of people per placement officer in the country.

"Tony Cawley and myself were always prepared to take the extra money available coming out at the end of the year. Before I left FÁS my budget was about £4.5 million for that scheme (the community employment scheme) alone, and Tony's was also around the four million pound mark. When the budget comes to the office, the placement officer has almost exclusive rights about how that money is spent. We never got into trouble about it and felt we spread it out fairly evenly.

"A lot of great work has been done with these schemes. From Ballintubber to Roundfort one can see the tremendous environmental improvements."

One particular scheme that Eddie singles out is the Irishtown group water scheme. Two years ago they were buying 140,000 gallons of water from the County Council every day, for an unsatisfactory service. He was approached to see if something could be done through the Community Employment Scheme. They started the scheme and found three wells on the farms, developed them and laid new piping and now they are not buying any water from the Council. All houses have clean spring water. In fact they are now selling water to the council.
"This gives you an idea about what the community can do by using the resources of the state that are there. I have the highest admiration for voluntary organisations that do these schemes. People who criticise them know nothing about them. The initiative the drive and everything involved in the schemes comes from the community. When you see people's enthusiasm at meetings in cold halls to try to do something for themselves, you could not but admire them and what they achieve.

"Those people who look to the Government or the county council are wasting their time. People will have to do things for themselves and use the resources of the state and other organisations that are there to help them.

"FÁS and other organisations are there to help. It is the community at large that get the job done."