Limerick leader is true original

The former president of UL Ed Walsh likes nothing better than to lock horns with the establishment. He's a one man think tank with little time for small talk. But no one can gainsay his record of achievement, writes LOUISE HOLDEN

DR ED WALSH occupies a unique space in Irish public life. He speaks as an academic, yet has been at loggerheads with the university system for his entire career. He flouts tradition while sporting a waistcoat and a using a fountain pen. He loves the cut and thrust of public debate, but privately finds it difficult to deal with opposing views or even small talk. Walsh can make hard work of a cup of coffee, says one colleague.

The founding president of the University of Limerick lays claim to many firsts in Irish life. He was the first to introduce large scale philanthropy into education funding here, through his relationship with Chuck Feeney. His was the first university to offer tailor-made graduates to industry; a move credited with kicking off the migration of US software multinationals to Ireland. He brought us the values of the US higher education system; a culture that was strongly resisted at the time, but is ubiquitous now.

He was the first to imagine, and realise, a university where significant numbers of students could live on campus, despite opposition from the Department of Education. He did all of this in the midst of hostility, bureaucracy and mistrust, but nothing got in his way.

Ed Walsh was born in Cork in 1939. He was schooled by the Christian Brothers and was in the same class as Ger Wrixon, who later went on to become president of UCC. Walsh studied electrical engineering in UCC and left for Iowa, where he worked and studied for 10 years in Iowa State University, gaining a master’s in nuclear physics and doctorate in electronics.

It was there he met and married his wife, Stephanie Barrett, daughter of Fine Gael TD Stephen Barrett, and two of their four children were born there.

The couple decided to return to Ireland, and Walsh was offered the job of developing Limerick’s National Institute for Higher Education (NIHE).

Walsh set about establishing an institute that was modelled on the technical universities of Europe and the United States. He spoke with the IDA and Shannon Development and, most significantly, US philanthropist Chuck Feeney.

Conor O'Clery writes about this propitious meeting in his biography of Feeney, The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune.

“‘Any time you are in the west, you might think of visiting Limerick,’ said Walsh politely. Feeney replied, ‘I’ll come down and talk to you.’ Three weeks later, Feeney turned up in Limerick. Walsh was wary of Irish Americans . . . and arranged to give him the usual routine: tea in his office for fifteen minutes, then a tour of the campus, situated on rolling meadows by the River Shannon. But the visitor showed an extraordinary interest in his vision for the college and hinted at access to funds... There was no culture of philanthropy, and no Irish educational institutions even had a foundation or a director of development.”

Despite the rough buildings and rudimentary facilities, Feeney recognised “a school on the uptake and a charismatic leader”. According to O’Clery, Feeney was also attracted by the notion of helping the underdog. “If Ireland was the underdog in Europe, Limerick was the underdog in the Irish academic world.”

With Feeney’s endorsement, Walsh got the ear of some influential US educators and set about priming his technical college for university status. His audacious approach won him the support of the World Bank and the European Investment Bank.

Limerick got funding for 100 laboratories and began to attract ambitious students. US multinational Analog Devices were the first to take notice. Dell, Microsoft, IBM and many others followed suit.

However, Walsh was not fêted on his home turf. His quest for university status was ill-met by the higher education community, who did not warm to his industry-friendly approach. It took 20 years convince the educational fraternity that Limerick deserved its university.

“There was always tension between Walsh and the other university heads,” says one commentator. “In the period leading up to Limerick’s promotion to university status, Walsh and Danny O’Hare (founding president of DCU, which gained university status around the same time in the late 1980s) were made to sit outside like schoolboys at the principal’s office, while the heads of the universities discussed their fate. Even when he got his place at the table Walsh was always the outsider.”

Walsh loved nothing better than to lock horns with the establishment, but he reserved his most spirited volleys for his old classmate Gerry Wrixon. “There was always competition between Wrixon and Walsh, which dated back to their schooldays,” says a former colleague. “Wrixon was first in the class and Walsh second. Wrixon couldn’t stand the fact that Walsh made university president before he did.” Walsh unashamedly poached musician Mícheál Ó Suilleabháin from UCC in retribution, using UL’s newly-built concert hall as bait.

Wrixon and Walsh are now regular sailing buddies.

Since his retirement from UL, Walsh has remained in the public eye. His profile is secured by his extraordinary achievements, but also by the joy he takes in contesting perceived wisdom. Walsh can always be relied upon to stir up debate – or “refresh the discourse”, as one leading academic puts it.

“Ed creates controversy to create space,” he says. “He professes what he believes to be logically right, regardless of the sensitivities involved. He has always operated this way, and it has allowed him to lead fundamental change in the Irish education arena. His role has always been as an antibody in the Irish system.”

Walsh is happy to take public positions beyond education, on anything from Middle Eastern politics to family planning, and his views are not always well-received.

As a result of his occasionally vexatious approach, he is easy to caricature. However, his politics are not straightforward.

“If he is anything, he is a meritocrat,” says a friend. “He believes in the virtues of competition and is not influenced by social background. However, it’s hard to slot him into any mould because, as the cliché goes, when they made Ed, they threw the mould away.”

Walsh is a very complex individual made up of myriad, and, at times, conflicting, parts. “I always found it confusing that Ed was such a champion for the applied sciences over the humanities, when he is the consummate Renaissance man himself,” says an observer. “He plays the violin, is a skilled silversmith and a sailor. He pushed the idea of modern university, focused on industry and free of the suffocating traditions of academia. However, he held graduate processions through the muddy building sites of early UL. He insisted on all the pomp and ceremony.”

His idiosyncrasies abound; one former colleague tells of how Walsh would refuse to reset his watch on his frequent trips to the US, and would organise meetings to facilitate sleeping during Irish night hours. He cannot abide small talk and will glaze over at mention of the weather. He will only engage in topics of the highest order – politics, philosophy, logic.

“He’s a one-man-think tank,” says one university leader. “He’s an authority on everything. What UL stood for in the 1980s is what all Irish universities stand for now. Walsh is a towering figure in education in this generation; because of him, unthinkable things became thinkable. Despite that, whenever he is suggested as a candidate to lead some educational board or other, there is always a chorus of ‘nos’. He’s still considered too antagonistic, too risky. Even after everything he has achieved he still has that effect on people.”