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Old Man Belfield
Michael Byrne, affectionately known as Old Man Belfield (10 January 1949 – 10/11 January 2021), was a homeless man who lived for over 30 years on the campus of University College Dublin (UCD) in Dublin, Ireland leading a "fiercely private" hermitic existence, during which he rarely spoke to anyone. Despite his self-isolation, he came to be "loved and respected by generations of students and staff" alike, was accepted as "part of the UCD community", and "touched people in ways he may not have known". After his death, the 'Michael Byrne Community Fund' was established in his memory, which provides accommodation bursaries to students of the university who may not have been able to afford accommodation otherwise.
It is unknown at what point Byrne became homeless, but it is known that by the late 1970s/early 1980s he was already sleeping rough on a "vacant plot of land" on Merrion Road, and was forced to relocate when construction eventually began on the same plot. Since that point until his death, he habitually slept rough, and often on the UCD campus. In his latter years, he slept in a dwelling compared to a "bunker" in a quiet corner of the UCD grounds, where he died in January 2021 from a heart attack in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a quiet individual who didn't drink, Byrne was not seen as an overt nuisance on campus, and even came to be regarded as somewhat of a "silent guardian" figure, who had, according to staff member Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, a "lovely quietness about him... (and a) kind of calm that just surrounded him". Ní Shúilleabháin had also attended UCD as a student, during which she became aware of Byrne. His guardianly presence was further bolstered by an incident one night in the early 1990s in which he saved a female student from assault (or worse) at the hands of an unknown male assailant.
During his lifetime, rumours circulated that perhaps Byrne "was a retired lecturer, (or) a student who had dropped out of college", but in reality neither were the case. Ní Shúilleabháin recalled that during her time on campus in the early 2000s, a story circulated that the reason "everyone was so nice to him" was because he had once "saved a girl from being raped". Ní Shúilleabháin understood this at the time to have been an urban myth, but noted that "whether or not that happened, everybody was just nice to him anyways".
Shortly after Byrne's death, UCD announced his passing via their official Twitter channel, which resulted in a response, the scale of which had not be seen before in the experience of Eilis O'Brien, a writer for the alumni magazine UCD Connections. Within 11 hours of the message being tweeted, it had been shared "with tens of thousands of students, graduates with messages of genuine sadness and personal tribute pouring in."
RTÉ (Ireland's public service broadcaster) noted that Byrne had had "an enormous impact" on the lives of "tens of thousands of people", and, according to The Irish Independent, was "held in high regard by students and staff" alike. A UCD law professor musing on Byrne's life opined that for an individual "who didn't really play a role in the academic part of the university, (he) left an abiding memory, I think, that will probably outlive the memory of most of us who actually do take part in the academic life of the university."
Little is known of Byrne's early life. In 2022, documentary maker Donal O'Herlihy attempted to uncover this in an RTÉ Radio 1 documentary entitled "Old Man Belfield", in which he posthumously attempted to track down the details of his birth and the family he had come from.
By using Byrne's PPSN (the Irish government's unique identifier of individuals in the country), which Byrne had previously entrusted to long-standing acquaintance Stephen McCarthy in order for him to collect his pension on his behalf, O'Herlihy, with the help of genealogist Damien O'Sullivan, was able to confirm his birth name and date of birth.
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Old Man Belfield
Michael Byrne, affectionately known as Old Man Belfield (10 January 1949 – 10/11 January 2021), was a homeless man who lived for over 30 years on the campus of University College Dublin (UCD) in Dublin, Ireland leading a "fiercely private" hermitic existence, during which he rarely spoke to anyone. Despite his self-isolation, he came to be "loved and respected by generations of students and staff" alike, was accepted as "part of the UCD community", and "touched people in ways he may not have known". After his death, the 'Michael Byrne Community Fund' was established in his memory, which provides accommodation bursaries to students of the university who may not have been able to afford accommodation otherwise.
It is unknown at what point Byrne became homeless, but it is known that by the late 1970s/early 1980s he was already sleeping rough on a "vacant plot of land" on Merrion Road, and was forced to relocate when construction eventually began on the same plot. Since that point until his death, he habitually slept rough, and often on the UCD campus. In his latter years, he slept in a dwelling compared to a "bunker" in a quiet corner of the UCD grounds, where he died in January 2021 from a heart attack in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a quiet individual who didn't drink, Byrne was not seen as an overt nuisance on campus, and even came to be regarded as somewhat of a "silent guardian" figure, who had, according to staff member Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, a "lovely quietness about him... (and a) kind of calm that just surrounded him". Ní Shúilleabháin had also attended UCD as a student, during which she became aware of Byrne. His guardianly presence was further bolstered by an incident one night in the early 1990s in which he saved a female student from assault (or worse) at the hands of an unknown male assailant.
During his lifetime, rumours circulated that perhaps Byrne "was a retired lecturer, (or) a student who had dropped out of college", but in reality neither were the case. Ní Shúilleabháin recalled that during her time on campus in the early 2000s, a story circulated that the reason "everyone was so nice to him" was because he had once "saved a girl from being raped". Ní Shúilleabháin understood this at the time to have been an urban myth, but noted that "whether or not that happened, everybody was just nice to him anyways".
Shortly after Byrne's death, UCD announced his passing via their official Twitter channel, which resulted in a response, the scale of which had not be seen before in the experience of Eilis O'Brien, a writer for the alumni magazine UCD Connections. Within 11 hours of the message being tweeted, it had been shared "with tens of thousands of students, graduates with messages of genuine sadness and personal tribute pouring in."
RTÉ (Ireland's public service broadcaster) noted that Byrne had had "an enormous impact" on the lives of "tens of thousands of people", and, according to The Irish Independent, was "held in high regard by students and staff" alike. A UCD law professor musing on Byrne's life opined that for an individual "who didn't really play a role in the academic part of the university, (he) left an abiding memory, I think, that will probably outlive the memory of most of us who actually do take part in the academic life of the university."
Little is known of Byrne's early life. In 2022, documentary maker Donal O'Herlihy attempted to uncover this in an RTÉ Radio 1 documentary entitled "Old Man Belfield", in which he posthumously attempted to track down the details of his birth and the family he had come from.
By using Byrne's PPSN (the Irish government's unique identifier of individuals in the country), which Byrne had previously entrusted to long-standing acquaintance Stephen McCarthy in order for him to collect his pension on his behalf, O'Herlihy, with the help of genealogist Damien O'Sullivan, was able to confirm his birth name and date of birth.