Annual Honorary Conferring Ceremony

02.12.2011

The annual Honorary Conferring Ceremony of the National University of Ireland took place in the Corrigan Hall, Royal College of Physicians in Ireland yesterday Thursday 1 December. At the Ceremony, the Chancellor of the University, Dr Maurice Manning conferred honorary degrees on the following:

Dr. Anne Anderson
Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN

Outlining Anne Anderson’s exceptional record of dedicated service and her illustrious career as a member of our diplomatic service. Professor Philip Nolan, President of NUI Maynooth said:
 
“There have been three central themes to Anne Anderson’s contribution to diplomacy and public life: the process of building peace and resolving conflict in Northern Ireland, the development of the European Union, and our relationship with and involvement in the United Nations’. Her more recent diplomatic career is dominated by her role in the EU and the UN, building on her early experiences to become one of Ireland’s outstanding diplomats.”
 
“Whether in multilateral diplomacy or in bilateral relations she combines forensic attention to detail with an ability to see the big picture.  A thread running through the performance of all her distinguished postings has been her deep sense of integrity and her unwavering commitment, She has approached the most sensitive of roles such as chairing the United Nations Commission on Human Rights or the Review of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, with tact, stamina, judgment and intellectual rigour. In this sense she has displayed on the world stage a vivid example of the best characteristics of the Irish public service.”

 

Dr. Michael Brodie
Chief Scientist of Verizon Services Operations

Dr Michael Brodie was introduced by the President of NUI Galway, Dr James J. Browne, who said that
 
“He is a world class scientist, whose publications confirm his status as a researcher and a human being.  He is a leader whose commitment to his fellow human beings informs the direction and the context of his research and the follow on translation into products and services for humanity. He has made important technical contributions to areas such as database systems, intelligent information systems, system interoperability, distributed computing, and semantic web technology and applications.”

 

Dr. Kieran Mulvey
Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Commission

Acknowledging Kieran Mulveys’ outstanding public service contribution over many years, Dr Jim Walsh, Deputy President of NUI Maynooth said of him that “he has had a distinguished career in the field of labour relations, and is widely recognised as a creative, courageous and visionary leader who has provided an outstanding contribution to public service in Ireland, particularly in his role as Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Commission over the past twenty years. Under his direction the LRC has become synonymous with dispute resolution and prevention in key areas of the public and private sectors.”
 
“He has an extraordinary capacity to find solutions to very complex issues, and in so doing he has contributed to the emergence of a more stable society that has the resilience to grapple with the deep challenges that Ireland is now confronting. He is widely recognised as an independent and original thinker, a man of deep wisdom, commitment, courageous leadership ability and superb negotiating skills, and also as a person that is driven by a value system that prioritises the public interest and strives for solutions that achieve appropriate balances.”
 
“His wider public service contribution in Ireland has included membership of the Governing Boards of UCD and DCU, the Independent Broadcasting Commission, and the National Economic and Social Council. He was an Adjunct Professor of Industrial Relations at the National College of Ireland and he has lectured widely in Ireland, Europe and the US. He is currently Chairman of the Irish Sports Council

 

Dr. Diarmaid Ó Muirithe
Historical Lexicographer

In his citation, Mr Moore McDowell claimed that Dr Diarmuid Ó Muirithe’s academic reputation is surpassed “only by the interest and affection of those who have read and heard his contributions in newspapers and on the airwaves for a generation and more.”
 
“His commitment in so much of his life has been to the preservation of cultural memory in an age when the sense of history is weakening as education is increasingly focused on the requirements of the workplace of the future rather than an understanding of how we have been shaped by the past.”
 
“From the early 1970s to this year, Diarmuid wrote and edited no fewer than twenty books, in both Irish and English, on cultural history, poetry and poets, and on his driving interest, words and language. In language studies he has become an internationally respected expert on dialect based on his knowledge of English dialects and what has now been recognised as a distinct field of study, Hiberno-English.”
 
“Diarmuid was never content to limit himself to an academic treatment of his subject, but has continued over this time to produce works aimed at creating and sustaining a wider knowledge of the treasury of language that we let slip from us at our peril. His radio and TV  programmes and his column in the Irish Times have been the most continuous vehicle for welcoming us into the witty and lightly worn world of his deep knowledge, but he has also encapsulated much of this in a series of books on words, their meanings and origins, that have become best sellers. The latest of these, Words We Don’t Use (Much Anymore), based on material originally produced for the Irish Times, appeared this year.”

 

Professor Maureen O’Rourke Murphy
Hofstra University, New York

Dr Michael Murphy, President of UCC summarised the career in Irish Studies of Professor Maureen O’Rourke Murphy, who, he said as “Co-director of the Irish studies programme at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, has been responsible for the development of Irish Studies in seven countries throughout her distinguished career.”  Of her support for Irish writers and scholars and for Irish studies, he said “Maureen has been tireless in developing opportunities for Irish poets, novelists, playwrights and critics to participate in annual conferences hosted at universities worldwide. She lectures regularly at the Yeats International Summer School and in Irish Studies at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.”
 
“Professor O’Rourke Murphy was a member of the Board of Editors of the Dictionary of Irish Biography published by the Royal Irish Academy and Cambridge University in 2009. An educationalist at heart, in 2001, she directed the New York Great Irish Famine Curriculum Project, a statewide, interdisciplinary/interactive curriculum for the study of the Great Irish Famine.”
 
“She is currently the historian of the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary/Watson House emigration project which aims to establish a permanent exhibition around the emigration of Irish women after the Great Famine.”

 

 

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