FOUR Irish universities have between them received £30 million from the philanthropic foundations of the reclusive Irish American, Mr Charles "Chuck" Feeney.
The largest single beneficiary is the University of Limerick, where Mr Feeney was founding chairman and is still a director of the college foundation. UL has received more than £15 million in assistance since 1989, for projects including the construction of a concert hall, student residences and a library.
The college president, Dr Edward Walsh, said Mr Feeney's role in the donations was always anonymous. Representatives of the foundations invited applications for funding of specific projects, and the details were never discussed with Mr Feeney.
The Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr Tom Mitchell, said the foundations had contributed "close to £9 million over the past five or six years". The money had been crucial to projects including the computerisation of the university's four million volume library.
The foundations' money was also vital to the building of a sports centre at Dublin City University, which has received "between £6 million and £7 million", according to its president, Mr Daniel O'Hare. University College Cork has been funded to the tune of "£3 million to £4 million".
Among lesser beneficiaries, the Disability Federation of Ireland received a "small five figure sum" in 1994 to carry out a review of its operations as an umbrella organisation for 60 voluntary groups providing services to the disabled.
Mr Feeney has not been formally honoured by any of the universities he has helped fund, each of which stressed he was known not to be interested in such recognition.
Mr Feeney has always shunned publicity and, until now, featured little in the US media. He was born in New Jersey, but his grand parents were from Co Fermanagh. However, his interest in Ireland is thought to have deepened with his involvement in the setting up of Shannon Duty Free.
He was educated on scholarship at New York's Cornell University, another of his major beneficiaries. Born a Catholic, he has five children by his first wife, but the marriage ended in divorce and he has since remarried.
Dr Mitchell called Mr Feeney was "one of the most altruistic people I have ever known".
Dr Walsh said: "He is absolutely committed to helping people, while at the same time absolutely unassuming about everything he does."
Mr Niall O'Dowd, his friend and the publisher of The Irish Voice, said Mr Feeney has been "single handedly shaping Irish universities" with his financial assistance.
