Dr Daniel O'Hare, founding president of Ireland's youngest university, was today awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Dublin City University at a ceremony in the Helix.

Dr O'Hare receives Honorary Doctorate

Tuesday 11 November 2008

The doctorate was conferred on Dr O'Hare by DCU President, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, who said:

"DCU is proud to recognise the extraordinary determination and vision of its founding President, Dr Danny O'Hare. Using very scarce resources with great imagination, he and his colleagues turned a small educational start-up in North Dublin into a world class university in the space of only two decades. Not only did it pioneer virtually every higher education innovation in Ireland, DCU also focused strongly on combating educational disadvantage. Danny O'Hare's legacy can be seen not just in DCU, but throughout the Irish higher education sector."

The citation was read by Professor Farrell Corcoran:

This is not the first time Danny O’Hare has had to sit on a stage and listen to words of praise like these. Several other universities have honoured this man who was not only the founding president of Ireland’s youngest university but who was – and is - sought out by many organisations for his commitment to social development, the idea that enlightened vision and leadership can be harnessed for social transformation. The roll-call of his contributions is very long. It includes: Chairman of the Food Safety Authority, the Government Task Force on Physical Sciences, the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, the Ballymun Regeneration Project and Beaumont Hospital.

But the foundation of Danny O’Hare’s stature in Ireland is undoubtedly his role in bringing to life Dublin City University. Indeed, it is difficult to keep separate the two narratives: the extraordinary arc of this university’s short history, and the narrative of Danny’s career. His curriculum vitae is almost completely intertwined with its evolution.

He was born in Dundalk in 1942, a part of Ireland where, as a previous citation notes, ‘skills and attributes have been honed by a border culture which includes pragmatism, adaptability, awareness of difference, an eye for opportunity and the willingness to innovate and improvise.’ This border culture was to serve Danny well, particularly in that strange decade of the 1980s, when the modernising project underway in Ireland since the 1960s was near collapse and the national economy seemed to be draining down the plug-hole.

Following a Christian Brothers education in Dundalk, he headed west, where he took his BSc and MSc in Chemistry in University College Galway. He completed his doctoral studies in St. Andrews University, and post-doctoral research followed in Michigan State and the University of Southampton. While still in his twenties, the young O’Hare came back to Ireland to pursue a career in education management, diving in at the deep end.

He became the first Principal of the Regional Technical College in Letterkenny, then Director of the Regional Technical College Waterford. By 1977, he was ready for an even bigger challenge, and at the age of 35, became the founding president of NIHE Dublin. With sheer persistence and single-mindedness of purpose, he led that Institute through twelve lean years towards the goal of earning its place in the community of Irish universities.

There is a curious nostalgia for the 1980s that is worming its way into the collective memory today. But they were hard times. Traditional industries were closing, mass unemployment was rising and emigration was re-starting at an alarming rate. There were three elections in eighteen months. Young people were leaving the country in droves, including bright young graduates. Not an auspicious time to be nurturing university-sized ambitions. Yet, Danny kept his staff on task, with a mixture of sheer doggedness and a refusal to ever contemplate failure or trim back the long vision. Tough times, he believed, demanded patience and stamina, especially when it became evident that Government had no secret plan to rescue higher education from severe under-funding. There were public service hiring embargoes and zero funds for building. Decisions had to be taken where every option was so finely balanced that paralysis had to be held at bay. Danny responded by encouraging improvisation within existing facilities, so that new courses could be launched and more students educated. He believed that leaders must keep up the courage of the organisation, in bad times as well as good, in the knowledge that what they preside over is a matter for pride and pleasure, and not only for worry and anxiety.

But there was another string to his bow. He was also working quietly off-stage to raise external funding, putting together networks of future donors whose role in building this university would become apparent only later, in the following decade. An International Study Group was appointed to explore the question of university status and recommended that a new university be established. Danny welcomed the outcome as ‘a thoroughly progressive decision’ and recorded ‘our deep sense of delight.’ And delight was the right word for it. Staff at all levels felt a huge sense of fulfilment and pride. Now his hand was greatly strengthened and the increasing momentum behind his fund-raising work was beginning to yield results. With his Educational Trust, he went to work with gusto, raising tens of millions of pounds on both sides of the Atlantic. Throughout the 1990s, the funding trickle became a river. In the university’s first decade, its building space grew six times and the campus you see today began to take shape. Since the very early days, Danny had included a North Dublin Arts Centre in his campus plan. This vision was finally realised in this beautiful building, the Helix, just as Danny was deciding, with his wife Sheelagh, to move on to another stage in his life.

Universities are more than buildings, of course, a lot more. There are less visible aspects that don’t appear on campus drawings. They have intellectual, cultural and creative dimensions that are experienced directly by staff and students, and indirectly by many others across the social spectrum who benefit from them. By the time Danny retired in 1999, after 22 years at the helm, the university had 11,000 students. Its graduates were widely respected by employers and fellow professionals. It had a reputation for welcoming innovative approaches to higher education. It had strong links internationally, as well as locally rooted connections with progressive projects, including linkages with other North Dublin Colleges. All of this is Danny’s legacy. And in all of his mighty contribution, Sheelagh O’Hare played an essential part, safeguarding that ever-important bridge between the public stage, where a university President must perform, and the private, nurturing sphere of the family. Her unobtrusive support and encouragement were always there when needed.

Danny is a very modest man, with a tendency to deflect praise towards others. But as he walks around the campus today, he must have much to reflect upon with quiet pride and satisfaction. Very few other people in Irish public life can match this contribution. In Christopher Wren’s magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, there is an inscription in Latin that suits Danny very well: “Si monumentum quaesieris, circumspice.” Which roughly translated means: if you are looking for a monument to him, just look around you.

We are delighted to honour Danny O’Hare today with the award of a Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa.