Racing to keep up with the world's best

The Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr John Hegarty, fears that academic talent will abandon the Republic for institutions abroad if funding levels do not improve - which is why his plans for the future are so ambitious, writes Kathryn Holmquist, Education Correspondent.

The 18th-century dining room in the Provost's House at Trinity College Dublin has had less than five coats of paint since 1760. The ornate plasterwork in the room features unique rope mouldings that, to many visitors, appear to be real ropes, says Dr John Hegarty, the Provost, as he stands admiringly in this grand room.

He points out a painting by Peter Lastman, a teacher of Rembrandt, which has travelled the world and seems none the worse for wear. Rembrandt is believed to have been greatly influenced by the painting, Coriolanus Receives the Embassy.

And then we move on to the saloon, once again hardly changed since the 18th century. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, founder of TCD in 1592, looks benignly upon a portrait of Francis Andrews, who built the Provost's House.

"I'm the 43rd provost of Trinity and the 23rd to live in this house," Dr Hegarty says.

He clearly enjoys the atmosphere, which includes a fine collection of Yeats paintings, on loan from a private donor.

Hegarty was made Provost two years ago, amid fierce competition which had academics chattering. He deliberately chose to identify with TCD's traditions by having his office in the house, which feels more like a museum than a family home. Living in the house with him are his wife, Neasa Ní Chinnéide, and their two sons, Cillian (12) and Ciaran (21). Ciaran commutes to UCD, where he is studying history and Irish, which allows him independence from his father. Cillian is at St Mary's.

The family enjoys the house, which functions as a private and public space. The public function is serviced by a steward in a white shirt and waistcoat, ensuring that everything runs smoothly.

It's a long way from Claremorris, Co Mayo, where John Hegarty grew up. The first in his family to attend university, Hegarty lost his father at the age of 12. His father, a farmer, died from a blood clot after a protracted illness. Like many people who lose parents young in life, the young Hegarty grew up before his time.

"Losing my father forced me to find my own way. Education, to me, was the way into the future," he says.

As a 17-year-old, Hegarty decided he wanted to be a priest and attended Maynooth. But he was soon seduced by science, especially physics. He went on to get a PhD in physics at University College Galway, which is about as far away from farm life as one could get. Yet that life was in itself scientific.

Helping his mother - who died only two years ago in her 90s - to run the farm gave the young Hegarty a practical grounding in scientific reasoning, in cause and effect, that was far away from today's obsession with computer games.

By 1986, Hegarty had become a professor of physics at TCD. Then aged just 38, he had already become convinced that "a good university needs to be led by good scholarship and research". Now 55, he is determined to make TCD the best in the world for research in particular areas such as medical genetics.

"Our genetics department is second to none in the world," he asserts. He wants TCD to become synonymous with excellence throughout the world in this area - as well as in neuroscience, nanotechnology (the science of the ultra-small) and molecular medicine.

Hegarty has Prof Michael Gibney - an international figure in the field of nutritional science - as dean of research, a post Hegarty himself once held. And Hegarty is leading an ambitious programme to develop research, social and housing facilities at TCD at a cost of €475 million over five years.

The goal is almost brazen in the current funding atmosphere. The State ranks 16th among developed nations in terms of spending on third level, relative to income. The ESRI declared recently that capital funding should be cut, a view Hegarty sees no sense in.

There is a real fear among university heads that academic talent, both students and staff, will abandon the Republic for institutions abroad if investment is not forthcoming, Hegarty says. Yet Hegarty is convinced that international talent will be attracted to TCD if the money is spent. He argues that excellence and investment are the only ways forward if an institution such as TCD is to thrive and not become a museum. And, he asserts, if TCD thrives, the country will thrive.

"Education, research and knowledge are the beating heart of the economy. They are not a cost, they are an investment. The population of 18-year- olds is dropping. So while the imperative in the past, when that population was growing, was to grow with it and admit more 18-year-olds, the challenge now is to grow in different ways. We have called a halt to growth in numbers for Trinity for two years, while we concentrate on developing infrastructure and research," he says.

TCD has had two Nobel Prize winners on the faculty, he points out - Samuel Beckett and the only Irish winner in science, Ernest T.S. Walton. This "tradition of excellence", as he calls it, needs to continue. So despite the antiquarian atmosphere of the Provost's house, Hegarty intends to marry tradition with thinking for the future.

But he stresses that the social sciences and humanities are as crucial to TCD's development as the physical and health sciences. He has plans to make TCD the top university in the world for "international integration" - which is globalisation to you and me.

"I want to build around the best people in that area. It's going to be a flagship for the university," he says.

He also wants TCD - which is home to great art such as the Book of Kells - to grow as a centre of excellence in the study of Irish art. As recently as 1970, 40 per cent of TCD's students came from outside the State, most of them from Northern Ireland, but some from elsewhere in the UK and Europe as well. Currently, only 17 per cent of students are from outside the State, and Hegarty would like to see this proportion increase to 20 per cent.

"I would like to see TCD as a microcosm of Irish society, North and South, as well as of the multicultural environment that Dublin has become," he says.

Hegarty has just returned from a visit to China, to a "daughter institution" of TCD, Trinity College Foochow, a secondary school of 4,000 students that was set up in the late 19th century by lay missionaries. Missionary zeal is not something normally associated with the current TCD, which is seen as a university for the privileged of the Republic, but Hegarty is forceful about his own mission.

"You get the money for research if you have good ideas, not the other way around," he says. "Research is our strength, so let's make it happen."

He is determined to get the best of public and private funding from competitive sources such as the EU and Science Foundation Ireland. Ties with business are crucial to the plan, although keeping TCD's independence and autonomy in such arrangements is essential, he adds.

Making each student's education "broader" is also a goal. He has introduced a dean of students, Bruce Misstear, to help students make the most of their campus life.

"We want each student who leaves here to feel that they have had the best," Hegarty says. "We want to get away from over-specialisation. Every student in the university should be drawing from every discipline the university has to offer, from the whole landscape of knowledge. Students should be involved with students from other cultures and we want to see every student involved up to the hilt in our more than 80 clubs and societies. This is what produces the well-rounded individual and the leadership skills that the world needs," he says.

Controversy over the high number of points required to gain admission to many courses at TCD has centred on the notion that learning how to sit exams does not produce a well-rounded individual. Hegarty is concerned that the goalof maximising points may not serve knowledge well. However, he does see the Leaving Cert as a well-rounded course and thinks that we'll have to live with it unless someone can come up with a more equitable system. "It's cruel to be fair," he says.

He believes the current generation are unselfish and idealistic in a new way.

"Conventional politics have turned them off and they are seeking their own ways and own expression," he says. "I'm very impressed with what students are doing and I have no concerns about the next generation taking over."

While he lives on campus - lives and breathes Trinity, to be fair - Hegarty has a private life that centres on family time at his wife's home place of Dingle, Co Kerry. He also has a sailboat, a 30-foot Jenneau, which he keeps in Howth and has sailed as far as northern Germany.

Sailing is a kind of tangible physical science, involving the primal elements of wind and sea. Hegarty used to race until he got the Provost's job, which - it becomes obvious after an hour in his company - is a different kind of race.