NUI Maynooth building to honour John Hume

John Hume, the former leader of the SDLP and Nobel Peace laureate, is to have the proposed new central auditoria and teaching building at his old college, NUI Maynooth, named in his honour. Making the announcement at the university's autumn conferrings NUI Maynooth president Dr W.J. Smyth said the university had decided "to salute its most distinguished lay graduate" - Hume holds a BA and an MA from the college - and said of that he was "a man in whom this university and this country can take pride". The John Hume building on campus would, he said, "stand as a symbol of what one graduate of the humanities has achieved" and be a "beacon of inspiration" for generations of graduates. More than 300 students received degrees and diplomas from the faculties of arts and science at the conferring.