NOTRE Dame University in Indiana is talking to University College, Dublin, about leasing the original Newman House on St Stephen's Green, UCD's most historic building, as a Dublin base for its Irish studies programme.
Notre Dame, best known for its American football team - nicknamed the "fighting Irish" - is the US's most famous Catholic university. Its public relations director, Mr Dennis Moore, said last week the university's ambition was to "create the best Irish studies programme in the US", and it was with this mind that it was looking for a Dublin base.
In recent years Notre Dame has greatly expanded its Irish studies programme and in 1993 brought over Prof Seamus Deane, the poet, novelist, literary critic and former UCD academic, to head it.
Mr Moore said Notre Dame was planning "a full blown faculty and student exchange set up" in Dublin, with perhaps 100 American staff and students spending a year doing their own classes and attending lectures at UCD and Trinity College. He said the centre would also offer complementary courses, such as Irish American studies, to Irish students.
Mr Moore said Newman House would be "an ideal location, because of its historical associations and city centre site". But he emphasised there was "a long way to go before everything is finalised".
Senior Notre Dame administrators, including its president, Father Edward Malloy, were in Dublin for the Notre Dame v. Navy American football match at Croke Park last November. They had talks then with both UCD president Dr Art Cosgrove and senior TCD officials about a site for the proposed centre.
At the end of January executive vice president, Father William Beauchamp, and senior associate provost, Father Timothy Scully, were back in Dublin for more talks. They also inspected 86 St Stephen's Green, one of the two 18th century buildings which make up Newman House, as a potential site for the Notre Dame centre. No 86 was the original site of the 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 Irish studies course every autumn. It contains the study bedroom of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. The other half of Newman House, at 85 St Stephen's Green, has been painstakingly restored and is open to the public.