OPINION: Attacks on University of Limerick president's house are unfair
AS FAR back as the 1970s, there was a dream for what was to become the University of Limerick. It would be honest, and hard-working, and above all it would be successful, no matter how long it took.
It didn't want to become UCC or TCD. It wanted to be better. To be different. And so it is.
But historically it has also been the underdog in Irish third-level education, and it's a tag that seems impossible to shake off.
There is a sense that the 'controversy' surrounding the president's residence in the past week - although highlighted for the past two and a half years - is linked with its "underdog stature."
If the president's residence had been built in Dublin or Cork would it have attracted the same attention? Trinity College Dublin has long had a residence for their provost, so why not UL?
Founding president, Dr Edward Walsh, said the university "wouldn't be there today if we didn't have an outrageously ambition plan for it."
The president's residence is an extension of that plan, which has long been outlined, and surely the Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe was aware of it before last week.
True, the country has lived with a background of corruption, greed and waste of public funds.
As Prof Barry said in one recent graduation ceremony, while espousing to graduates to be honourable and ethical in their future careers: "We have been exposed to a world where people came second and money came first, where there was no accountability and, in some instances, no honour."
But to bracket UL's new residence in the same frame as Rody Molloy's golden handshake, as MEP Sean Kelly did, is grossly unfair and ultimately misdirected.
It must also be deeply hurtful to those at UL who have long worked in the best interests of their students, and the region as a whole.
We should cast our minds back to mid-2007 when UL was one of just two colleges in the country awarded the opportunity to open a graduate entry medical school, alongside the Royal College of Surgeons.
Other universities who lost out on the contract were stunned. But the school's first director, Paul Finucane, wasn't in the least bit surprised.
"The only surprising thing from my perspective is how surprised everybody else was that UL's bid was successful," said Dr Finucane.
Luckily, some people like an underdog. Chuck Feeney is one, and so too the late Lewis Gluckman, while Dr Walsh has also on occasion been painted as a dog with a bone when it came to university funds.
Feeney, the billionaire philanthropist behind Atlantic Philanthropies, has given hundreds of millions of euro to UL for the betterment of its students because he trusted people like Dr Walsh, John O'Connor, Roger Downer, and Don Barry, the current president.
Of the hundreds of millions donated to UL - invested in state-of-the-art buildings enjoyed by thousands of students across the campus - just €1m to €2m has been afforded to its president, not as a personal donation, but for a property with a public purpose. It will see visiting dignitaries and guests of the university stay in the same residence at Garraun, Clonlara, along with Don Barry and his wife Anna. Thus, the house will be far more than a private residence for the UL president's use. It has a wider purpose.
Two years ago when the boom was still upon us,students were up in arms that their money was being spent on a €17.8 million bridge, and hardly anyone was paying attention.
The word 'lavish' wasn't in the popular lexicon then, but it seems it can now be applied to a house built with private funds, at one-ninth of the cost.
Anne Sheridan is a graduate of the University of Limerick
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