A FORMER president of University College, Galway, and chairman of the New Ireland Forum, Dr Colm O hEocha, died at his home in Galway yesterday.
Dr O hEocha was born in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, in 1926, the first of three children of Seamus O hEocha. His father, famous as An Fear Mor, used to travel around Ireland giving Irish lessons for the Gaelic League before becoming the first master of the Irish College in Ring, where Colm was brought up.
After secondary school, he won a scholarship to the De La Salle teachers preparatory college in Ballyvourney, Co Cork. In 1945, he went to UCG to study chemistry under Prof Tom Dillon, where he wrote his master's thesis in Irish.
Yet another scholarship took him to the University of California, where he earned a Ph.D. in oceanography. He spent five years in the US and returned to UCG in 1955 keen to set up a department of oceanography. When this was not possible, he became a lecturer in biochemistry. He became the university's first professor of biochemistry in 1962.
During the 1950s and 1960s he was notably successful in attracting research funding to UCG at a time when such funding was not easily available. In 1967, he was appointed chairman of the National Science Council, the first of many chairmanships of public bodies.
In 1975, he was elected president of University College, Galway. Under his presidency, UCG expanded rapidly, reaching 6,000 students by 1995. He worked hard to promote links between industry and the college and to integrate the life of the university with the life of the city. He was very conscious of the university's image and caused some controversy by appointing the PR firm, Wilson Hartnell, to work on the UCG account.
In March, 1983, the former taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, asked him to chair the New Ireland Forum, which brought together Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and the SDLP to work out a joint and agreed constitutional nationalist approach to a settlement in Northern Ireland.
His low profile, self effacing role was largely credited with bringing the Forum to a relatively constructive conclusion, despite the tensions between the views of Dr FitzGerald and Mr Charles Haughey.
In his latter years, Dr O hEocha also served as province chancellor of the National University of Ireland; chairman of the Arts Council; and chairman of the interim local radio commission.
He retired as president of UCG on his 70th birthday in July last year. He was the longest serving Irish university president in Ireland and the only remaining life president in the NUI.
Dr O hEocha had honorary degrees conferred upon him by Queen's University, Belfast Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Limerick. He was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French government in the early 1980s.
He was an honorary life member of Galway Chamber of Commerce and Industry and in 1995 was made a freeman of Galway.
He is survived by his wife, Daiden, and seven children.