By the time he retires as TCD Provost in 2001 Dr Thomas Mitchell hopes to have overseen the completion of most of a £210 million building programme, the largest in the long history of the college.
The jewel in the crown will be a £20 million library and research information centre to be built between the Berkeley library and Nassau Street. It will provide an extra half-million volumes on open access in the country's only copyright library, which was used by 13,000 non-TCD researchers last year.
In Rathgar, the university has ambitious plans for its Trinity Hall residence. It plans to build 850 new apartments at a cost of £30 million, half of this raised in gifts from private donors. All or most of these will be available by October next year.
In Pearse Street, just beyond the new students' residence building and beside Pearse Station, a £20 million sports centre will be built to incorporate the first swimming pool in the university's history.
The site enclosed by the railway line and the corner of Pearse Street and Westland Row, which is presently a car-park, will see a £10.5 million information technology building.
This will include a major new pedestrian entrance to the campus, with an atrium design which Dr Mitchell hopes will improve the rather scruffy aspect of its north-eastern corner.
There will also be a £10.5 million materials science institute, also at the university's modern "East End".
The bulk of this capital programme, like the £70 million for buildings already completed, will be funded from private sources. Dr Mitchell said the Government provides only 30 per cent of its money for capital projects.
The State's contribution to current spending is also declining, from 64 per cent four years ago to 53 per cent last year.
Major donors in the past 10 years have included Dr Tony O'Reilly, with £1.5 million for the building named after his father; Mr Michael Smurfit, £3 million for the Smurfit Institute of Genetics and a chair in genetics; Lady Normanby of the Guinness family, £1.2 million for the Moyne Institute for Microbiology; Mr Martin Naughton of Glen Dimplex, £1 million for the Institute of Genetics and the School of Pharmacy; and Mr Don Panoz and the Elan Corporation, £1.5 million for the School of Pharmacy and the Panoz Institute.
£1 million was given by the American Ireland Fund, and another £500,000 by friends of the New York Times journalist Sidney Gruson, a Dublin-born Jew, to endow the Chaim Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion and Culture.
Dr Mitchell hopes the new chair in Jewish studies will soon be followed by chairs in Islamic and Buddhist studies. A cross-disciplinary programme in Asian studies is being planned, with the first steps being new courses in business studies and Chinese and Japanese.