THE former president of Letterkenny Institute of Technology has admitted there were days when he wondered if Atlantic Techological University would ever get over the line.

Paul Hannigan spoke to the Donegal News at an official launch event held at the Port Road campus on Monday.

On whether there was ever a time when he thought the project might fall, Mr Hannigan said there had been occasions, most notably when a drive was instigated for bigger technological institutes rather than one single university.

“When you look back to when these things were mooted in the first place, there were proposals that we needed to become bigger institutes of technology, that we needed to merge as institutes of techonology and at some time in the future we would become a technological university.

“In fairness to the staff, particularly through the unions, they resisted this 100 per-cent, as did the presidents of the incumbent colleges. We could not see any benefit to anyone of becoming a bigger institute of technology, the prize was becoming a university and we fought very hard for that.

“When the legislation was passed in 2018, that reflected the lobbying that had gone on to make sure that happened and instead of a four step process to get to where we wanted to go, we had a one step process.”

Out with old…The new branding for Atlantic University. Old material relating to LYIT has been sent to Junk Kouture for recycling.

A prolonged round of applause was afforded to Mr Hannigan for the work he has done during his time in office. He will remain on as head of college at the LYIT campus, a supporting role to Dr Orla Flynn who has been appointed president of the new university.

“At the moment the president has asked me to stay on as head of college which will be the head of ATU Donegal which includes Letterkenny and Killybegs. I am very content to do that because my heart lies in this area and I want to make sure it contributes positively to the development of the university.”

Mr Hannigan said he was delighted to see Dr Flynn appointed to the university’s most senior role. He also added that Ireland’s youngest higher education facility owes much to the various staff, boards of management and students who campaigned over many years for university status.

“We have worked on this for the past ten years, there have been a lot of bumps on the roads at different stages but the three institutions came together really strongly and worked really strongly together.

“We are really happy that we have a lot of groundwork done on the development of the university and we are really confident that we can build something really special here now,” Mr Hannigan said.