Former education minister Gemma Hussey recounted in her memoirs how, at an ASTI conference in Killarney in 1985, she was "groped disgustingly by a drunken Donegal teacher who wanted me to get on the dance floor."

"I considered slapping his face and then thought better of it, " recalled the Fine Gaeler, who at the time was locked in a bitter pay battle with the teachers. Hussey admitted that she "dreaded" the Easter ritual of the three teachers' conferences . . . the ASTI, INTO and TUI . . . and said she had "an appallingly bad time at them."

At the same Killarney conference, Hussey recalled that the secretary of the Department of Education, in a conversation with women's rights campaigner and Employment Equality Agency chief Sylvia Meehan, had called her "sweetheart" and ruffled her hair.

Hussey was rescued from the drunken Donegal teacher by ASTI officials, but she said she didn't know whether Meehan ever got an apology.

Harney was unlikely to suffer the same fate from the nurses, even though the INO is also looking for a pay increase costed by the Health Service Executive at 1.5bn a year.

The Tanaiste denied that she wimped out on the Irish Nurses' Organisation's invitation to address its conference, claiming her failure to attend was a "diary issue, " and that it was important to attend the medical health conference in the US.

"Frosty receptions are not of any concern to me, " said Harney, who added that the nurses were aware for months that she had a "prior engagement."

But while there is some suggestion that the INO was making political hay out of Harney's refusal to come to Cavan, the minister was also "unavailable" three weeks earlier to address the Siptu national nursing convention.

Harney's predecessor, Micheal Martin, always addressed the Siptu and, indeed, the INO conferences.

Harney's party colleague, justice minister Michael McDowell, had the reverse problem two weeks ago when the Garda Representative Association insisted he stay away from its conference.

McDowell was keen to go and "eat their dinner" and then tell them how right he was and how wrong they were. He denied he was "miffed" by the snub, and later addressed the more senior AGSI conference.

But most unions are not as exercised about ministers attending, or not attending, their conferences as the nurses and the gardai appear to be.

A spokesman for Siptu . . .

the largest union in the country, with over 200,000 members . . . said that it has no policy either way on asking ministers to their conferences. "Though Harney didn't come to our nursing conference three weeks ago, she has addressed Siptu regional conferences in the past, " he said.

But the PSEU and the AHCPS public service unions, which represent middle and senior public servants respectively, have a longtime ban on ministers attending conferences after the carpeting they received back in the 1980s from the then minister for the public service, John Boland of Fine Gael.

Boland, who died in 1993, was considered one of the sharpest ministers in the coalition government, but had no diplomatic or persuasive skills at all.

Having been invited to address what would have been the union representing his own staff, Boland . . .

to open-mouthed astonishment in the hall . . . berated the unions for bankrupting the country with their excessive wage demands. The 'debate' continued at the bar for most of the night. After the minister was finally put in his car, the unions agreed 'never again.'

The 'silent treatment' of ministers addressing conferences can be a far more effective form of protest than heckling, as Mary O'Rourke, education minister in 1988, found at that year's INTO conference. But this was no problem to O'Rourke, a serial attender of trade union conferences when she was a minister, particularly if there was a good row to be had and a hand to be shook.

When he was minister for labour, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was another who had to be dragged away from union conferences. Ahern would frequently stay for the dinner and even overnight chatting and debating with union officials and reporters into the small hours of the morning . . . something he doesn't do anymore.

But it is the teacher conferences which always provide the best drama, and none more so than the chaotic 2001 ASTI conference in Galway, when the secondary teachers union was locked in a bitter pay battle with the government, parents, students, the media and the other teacher unions.

Michael Woods, who was downshifting with the education portfolio before slipping into the political wilderness, was dispatched to Galway to try and bring the warring teachers onside.

The minister, who was on a tight schedule, was firstly made to wait almost an hour in the corridors outside before he could address the conference. And then, when he eventually entered, half the delegates walked out and those who remained continually barracked and shouted at him during his address.

Woods rolled with the punches, declaring at one stage that there was nothing wrong with a bit of a protest "as long as the children weren't hurt."

As he was leaving, he even managed to sing along with some of the protesting teachers . . . a move that completely disarmed the protesters.

The conference then descended into complete farce when Pat Herlihy, press officer of the National Parents Council . . . which was also a guest at the conference . . .

was punched in the face as he went for a snack during a break in the conference.

This led to an almost surreal moment the next morning when the then head of the ASTI, Charlie Lennon, stood up at the conference and, before a motion on the future of education, urged the teachers to co-operate with the gardai who were coming to the hotel to investigate.

The next day, Marie Danaswammy, head of the parents council, left the conference in high dudgeon, twice . . . the second time for the TV cameras which were, by now, covering the conference almost live.

Things have never been the same since.