Former US president Bill Clinton is to deliver a keynote address at Trinity College Dublin later this year.
Mr Clinton will come to Trinity at the invitation of the Independent Newspapers Group.
It has been reported that he will receive a fee of £100,000 for the engagement.
The lecture is said to be a possible opportunity for Mr Clinton to become involved again in the Northern Ireland peace process.
On January 13th this year, the Irish Times's US correspondent wrote: ". . . even in the ranks of Irish-American Republicans, who are prepared to acknowledge his contribution to the North, there was a guffaw of mirth at a suggestion that Mr Clinton might be sent back as a special envoy by the Bush administration. "Yet, like him or not - and many on the left resent him just as fiercely - the personally flawed Mr Clinton can not be reduced to political insignificance."
Polls show his approval rating is still at 62 per cent. Two dates have been mooted for Mr Clinton's address - May or early autumn.
Last year, former South African president Mr Nelson Mandela returned to Dublin, for the first time since he had been made a freeman of the city in 1990, to deliver the keynote speech at the annual Independent Newspapers lecture.
In 1999, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, gave the keynote address.