A new €16 million education and research centre dedicated to former SDLP leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mr John Hume, has been opened at NUI Maynooth.
In opening the facility, the President, Mrs Mary McAleese, paid tribute to Mr Hume, who she said had given the children of Ireland "a good future thanks to his sacrifice, his resilience and his determination".
"With his degree in French and History from this university, John Hume could have had an easy life, a quiet life," she said. "With his brain power he could have made a fortune and spent it, without a murmur of criticism, on a life of comfort. He chose to turn his back on all those possibilities and to make of his life a gift of leadership.
"Since 1969, he has served in a range of parliaments, spoken on platforms throughout the world, but his heart was always in the homes and the streets where the suffering inflicted by sectarianism and by violence made so many lives a living hell," the President said.
Mr Hume said he was "deeply moved" that the university had dedicated the facility to him. "I owe a great debt of gratitude for the education I received when I was a student there."
The university also announced the establishment of the John and Pat Hume Scholastic Awards, named after the politician and his wife, which will provide financial and other support to emerging scholars and researchers.
The John Hume Building, the building of which began in August 2002 and is the centrepiece of the university's recent €100 million campus development, is designed by Coady Partnership Architects, from Dublin and is being built by O'Hare and McGovern of Newry.
The building houses seven lecture theatres, ten seminar rooms, and teaching and research facilities for students and staff. In addition, the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis and the NUI Maynooth Department of Psychology have been given research and teaching facilities in one wing of the building.