Page 57
Interview | ALUMNI
(...Continued from page 56) There was an exam halfway through, and the top half from that exam were being taken on a tour of Luxembourg and Strasbourg with Mrs Robinson. They needed money – I can’t remember how much, maybe a couple of thousand pounds and I remember getting on to my grandfather, and explaining the need for the money for the tour to go ahead, and he wrote the cheque.”
Patrick himself has a keen interest in science, particularly genetics, and lectures on the topic of Irish genealogy. He also donates to the University himself to help fund doctoral students. This comes from a deep respect for education, and a desire to make the time in university “as fi nancially easy as possible for students.” “We’re on the edge of Europe,” he says. “We can only survive by brainpower. Anything which gets in the way of that is not helping.”
Having researched and written a book on Arthur Guinness, Patrick is well placed to discuss the family history. It turns out that the Guinness family have been in the drinks business as far back as the records go, although it was originally in a much different market.
“His [Arthur’s] grandfather had a farm in Simmonscourt in the early 1700s, and it seems that they were dairy farmers selling milk on the streets of the city,” Patrick begins. “And then Richard [Arthur's father] being the third son, left home because he had no reason to stay, and started selling black liquid instead of white liquid.”
This had all been researched many years ago, but at the time the Guinness family were not terribly interested in their farming roots. What, then, prompted the interest? In 1997, Patrick was invited to give speech at Kildare’s heritage week, and he discovered he knew little to nothing about the family’s roots there. “So I did a bit of research, helped by local historians, and the basics of the story came together. And I suddenly realised that as the Celtic Tiger was limbering up, it was really the very same story as any other Irish family: going from farming to the big smoke. We had just done that journey one or two hundred years before everybody else.” Now, of course, everyone else is catching up."
“A few years ago, I can remember being quite surprised bumping into Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains, whom I’d known from my childhood back in the '60s. I got talking to him about his family. His daughter is working in theatre in New York and his son is working for NASA. I can remember thinking ‘Wow,... here you have a guy who’s not just brilliant at traditional music but world-famous at it, and his kids are getting on with the future.’ Whatever I think about what my family has achieved over 200 years, the Moloneys have done it in one generation. I take my hat off to them.”
This view of the Guinness story as a metaphor for the changes in Irish life is indicative of the general view the family seems to hold of themselves as perfectly normal. Patrick wasn’t treated any differently in his college life and didn’t seek any publicity for himself: the Guinness ‘aristocracy’ is, seemingly, a myth. Perhaps it is this identifi cation with the everyman that is behind their long history of philanthropy.
Before we finish, I ask if he has any advice for today’s students. “If you want to make money in life, the most important thing is to fi nd out about it,” he says. “Even if you’re doing an arts or a philosophy degree or something like that. Banking has a bad press at the moment, but the reality is that it’s one of the few areas in life where you can engage in that business with very little background, just knowledge and a burning ambition, and earn a very substantial salary before you’re 30. That’s not to be sniffed at
I have a daughter who’s just done business studies in her Leaving Certificate. I remember sitting down with her and saying ‘Where does it say that the fi rst duty of a business is to make profit?’ And she said ‘Well, dad, it’s not that kind of course. We have to learn about health and safety, labour law and registration for tax.’ Now that’s all very important, and that’s part of it, but that all falls by the wayside if you don’t make a profit. Page one of the textbook should refer to making profits and everything should follow from that.”
And, at the end of the day, the major contributions the Guinness family have made to Trinity and the city of Dublin, let alone the multitude of other causes, have only been possible due to the commercial success of the brewery. The last century has seen very little reduction in the close philanthropic links between the brewing empire and College, and through the work of Patrick Guinness and others, it continues to this day.
(Photo captioned: Patrick Guinness with his daughter Jasmine)
For information on how you can support Trinity College Dublin, please contact Trinity Foundation,
foundation@tcd.ie or +353 (0)1 896 2088
"Arthur's Round: The Life And Times Of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness" is published by Peter Owen Publishers.
Trinity Today | 55
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84