One of the State's most successful university heads, Dr Danny O'Hare of Dublin City University, has announced that he will step down next September.
Dr O'Hare (56) was the founding president of DCU when it opened in 1980 as the National Institute of Higher Education Dublin with 220 students. It now has 10,000 students, 5,500 of them full-time.
The university is highly regarded by the Department of Education for its wide range of technology-based courses, its close links with industry and its fund-raising achievements.
Dr O'Hare has taken a leading role in the latter. He said earlier this month that between now and 2000, DCU would spend £130 million, of which only 30 per cent would be provided by the State - the rest would come from borrowings or fund-raising.
The university's chancellor, Dr T.P. Hardiman, said yesterday: "Excellence has been the defining characteristic of DCU under Dr O'Hare's leadership. Research at the university compares well with the best in the EU and elsewhere, and the university has played a pivotal role in the development of information technology in Ireland."
Dr O'Hare said yesterday that by next September it would be over 22 years since he took up the job as head of the NIHE, and 10 years since he became president of DCU.
He was leaving now because it was "very important that an institution like DCU should renew itself, and a change of leadership will facilitate this". That was the advice he would give to someone else in his situation, so he was taking his own advice.
He said he would not be retiring and would be available for any interesting non-executive task.
Dr O'Hare also chairs the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities, the Food Safety Authority and Ballymun Regeneration Ltd.