Notre Dame University in Indiana has announced that it will invest around $8 million (£5.5 million) in a new study centre in Dublin's Newman House as part of an ambitious expansion plan for its Irish studies programme.
The plan has been welcomed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews. It will involve an unprecedented agreement between Notre Dame and both UCD and TCD to provide classes and housing for the incoming American students and transatlantic student and faculty exchange programmes between the universities.
The president of Notre Dame, Father Edward Malloy, announced the expansion of its Keough Institute for Irish Studies over the weekend. The institute is under the direction of the poet, critic and novelist, Dr Seamus Deane, the former UCD lecturer who is now professor of English and Irish Studies at Notre Dame. His latest work is the prize-winning novel, Reading in the Dark, based on his Derry childhood.
The director of the new Dublin centre will be the social historian Dr Kevin Whelan. It will be housed in part of No 86 St Stephen's Green, one of the two 18th century buildings which make up Newman House. This was the site of the original Catholic University of Ireland, which opened in 1854 with John Henry Newman as its first rector.
No 86 needs considerable refurbishment and is little used by UCD apart from some offices and for an occasional Irish studies course. James Joyce studied there and the room occupied by the Jesuit poet and priest, Gerald Manley Hopkins, is still preserved. The other side of the building, 85 St Stephen's Green, has been painstakingly restored and is open to the public.
Seventy Notre Dame students will start in No 86 next autumn, either for a term or a full year of study. They will also take courses in UCD and TCD and will be housed in their student residences. This number will rise to 100 by 2000.
At the same time they, together with students from the Dublin universities, will take courses in subjects like theology and philosophy - in which Notre Dame has an international reputation - in Newman House.
Notre Dame, which is best known for its American football team, - is the US's most famous Catholic university.
Father Malloy said on Saturday, during a teleconference link-up with UCD president, Dr Art Cosgrove, and TCD provost, Dr Thomas Mitchell, that Notre Dame aimed "to create a premier international vehicle for Irish studies and to engender a genuine partnership in teaching and scholarship with Ireland."
He said the new centre would be "a vital and renewed link between the people of Ireland and the many more people of the international Irish diaspora."
The expansion plan, which will cost a total of $13 million, has been underwritten by a principal donation from Mr Donald Keough, former president of Coca- Cola and now chairman of the investment bankers Allen and Co; and also from Mr Thomas O'Donnell, managing director of the Chicago investment firm Oppenheimer and Co; Dr Michael Smurfit, chairman of the Smurfit Group, and Mr Martin Naughton, executive chairman of Glen Dimplex.
In Notre Dame itself the plan will create three new endowed professorships: a visiting chair in Irish studies and chairs in medieval Irish history and modern Irish literature.