Ireland must adapt to live with success - Desmond

Ireland has to better learn how to live with its successful entrepreneurs, the multi-millionaire financier Mr Dermot Desmond told a public audience in Dublin last night.

His lecture on the future of learning, at the National College of Ireland in the IFSC, was introduced by the chairman of the college, multi-millionaire entrepreneur Mr Denis O'Brien. The two businessmen made fortunes together through their involvement in Esat Digifone and are both tax exiles.

Mr O'Brien said Mr Desmond had been in Afghanistan "before the Americans" working for the World Bank, and had come back to Dublin where he founded NCB.

Some years later he took a "slight detour" when he became involved in dealings concerning the former Johnston Mooney & O'Brien site in Dublin.

"I'm not sure what sort of dough he was making but there were no sliced pans involved," Mr O'Brien said.

He said Mr Desmond had an "innate instinct" for business and was "virtually always spot on". He had come up with the idea of the IFSC and had also come up with the idea of the National Treasury Management Agency.

Mr O'Brien said that if Mr Desmond was a British citizen, "I would be introducing him as Sir Desmond".

However, he said, Mr Desmond, thankfully, did not change his colours.

Mr Desmond, when opening his address, said he last spoke publicly in the IFSC at its foundation, 17 years previously. In a lengthy address to an audience of educationalists, business figures and students, Mr Desmond said the universities of the future would be a mix of "clicks and mortar", with students accessing information through technology and using teachers as Socratic mentors.

Afterwards, during a question and answer session Mr Desmond was asked how Ireland could learn to live with its successful entrepreneurs.

"Better than it has," he replied, to laughter. He then said that he was Irish, his family was Irish, and he intended to die Irish. "I have to learn to live with the strengths and weaknesses of the Irish personality, including my own."

At one stage during Mr Desmond's address Mr O'Brien's phone began ringing. "That's the mobile supremo," said Mr Desmond.