Tierney/MacNeill Photographs
Michael Tierney was a former president of University College Dublin who had a distinguished academic and political career. He married Eibhlín, the daughter of politician and academic, Eoin MacNeill. Tierney was a complex figure in the Irish educational and political landscapes: an authoritarian president of the university who regarded Trinity College Dublin as ‘an alien element’ and advocated its merger with UCD but who opposed the 1929 Censorship Act, and believed in the autonomy of universities from state control. Moving UCD from the overcrowded buildings at Earlsfort Terrace and St Stephen’s Green to the Belfield campus was the culmination of Tierney’s personal vision for the university and the Belfield campus stands as a testament to his single-mindedness and strength of character.
The Tierney/MacNeill photographs are part of the Tierney papers and complement not only the papers of other UCD academics held in UCD Archives, but also the many politicians who were graduates and/or staff members of the university and were involved in the foundation of the state.
The black and white photograph shown here is one of a series recording the official opening of the Belfield campus in September 1962 and shows Eamon de Valera paying obeiscence to the Roman Catholic Archbishop, John Charles McQuaid. This photograph comments on the many contradictions and ironies of Ireland in the early 1960s: the president of UCD watching benignly whilst the head of state, de Valera, kneels to honour the iconic McQuaid.
