I couldn’t let this one pass without comment either. Mary ‘shop around’ O’Dea has landed a new job at the IMF, as the Irish Independent reported earlier this month.
O’Dea, currently director general of financial operations at the Regulator, will become the IMF’s alternative executive director this July.
“I’m really looking forward to what I know will be a challenging role, especially at a time when Ireland is itself in an IMF/EU programme,” O’Dea told the Sunday Independent. This paper asked the Regulator two months ago if O’Dea would be taking up a new job in the IMF.
I suppose you could with some jest say that she is getting out of dodge when the going is good. Rumour has it there were no promotion prospects internally at the now expanding Central Bank, so she was bumped off to Washington. Apparently the job is a rather nice 3 years in Washington DC tax-free with expatriate benefits (including private schools).
Oddly though she goes from sitting in our Central Bank/Financial Regulator up to and during IMF intervention, to now sitting on the other side of the table to perhaps help scrutinise our adherence to an IMF deal.
I have had the privilage and honor of knowing Mary since my childhood. She is an amazing woman who has worked incredibly hard in a ‘mans’ world to achieve all she did. She is someone who has integrity and passion for everything she does in her life. If there were more like Mary in places of power in Ireland then our precious country would not be in such disarray.