The former attorney general and European commissioner Peter Sutherland has donated €4 million towards the development of a new law school on the UCD campus at Belfield, Dublin.
This follows the recent appointment of Professor Imelda Maher as the Sutherland chair of European law at UCD. Mr Sutherland, the chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs, is a UCD law graduate.
UCD says the donation will be "a significant factor in raising additional funds from Government and other sources for the €20 million development".
The UCD School of Law has 30 full time staff, over 1,000 undergraduates and graduate students.
Last night, UCD president Dr Hugh Brady said: "Peter Sutherland's generosity will enable us to transform the undergraduate experience of our law students. It will enhance the linkages with the humanities, social sciences and business. It will facilitate the development of post-graduate or fourth-level legal education and research. And it will enhance our capacity in continuing professional education in key areas such as European law, commercial law, competition law and intellectual property rights, as well as the development of new programmes in humanitarian law and public international law."
The UCD School of Law includes the Institute of Criminology, whose work on re-offenders was recently widely publicised.
The school has recently been awarded the contract for the codification of Ireland's criminal law by the Department of Justice and Law Reform.
