Pro-Chancellor Hugo MacNeill

Hugo was educated at Blackrock College before coming to Trinity where he graduated with a BA in Economics. In 1978 he was elected a Foundation Scholar and also studied for the Diploma in Anglo Irish Literature.

He played rugby for Leinster and Ireland from 1981 to 1988 winning two international championships and toured New Zealand with the British and Irish Lions. He played soccer for Trinity winning the intervarsity Collingwood cup in 1978.

He has consistently promoted social justice. He established the third world charity GOAL in Trinity. He supported the Trinity Anti-Apartheid movement refusing to join the Ireland rugby tour of (the then Apartheid) South Africa in 1981. As a result, he was invited to meet President Nelson Mandela.

He was Chairman of the Ireland Funds in Dublin and London, a worldwide organisation promoting peace and justice in Northern Ireland and also projects promoting social justice across the island of Ireland. In 1996 following the IRA bombing of Canary Wharf in London he organised, together with his Irish teammate Trevor Ringland, a Peace International which brought the best rugby players in the world to Dublin to play against Ireland to support those working for peace on this island. He was Chairman of the British Irish Association between 2010 and 2023, an organisation set up at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland which brings together politicians, academics, journalists and others in an annual conference in Oxford or Cambridge to promote relationships across these islands. Earlier this year he was awarded an Honorary OBE for this work and also an Honorary Doctorate from Queens University Belfast.

He studied economics at Oxford University before joining the Boston Consulting Group in London in 1985. He subsequently joined Goldman Sachs where he worked in London, New York, Hong Kong and Dublin.

For over the past decade he has worked with the exceptional team in the Trinity Centre for Intellectual Disabilities. This is an internationally leading initiative for young people providing a structured course and then subsequent employment with many of Irelands leading companies and global firms. He has helped build meaningful work opportunities for many of our most vulnerable young people. He is also working with the team to build this network of universities across the island and indeed internationally as we get enquiries and requests for support. The potential is enormous.