It was Benjamin Franklin who once said that “out of adversity comes opportunity” and this was certainly true at NUI Maynooth. In the case of the University this adversity took place on the 28th of November 2008, when extensive damage was caused by a fire in the students restaurant of its North Campus (see picture below).
The fire service was alerted at 11.27am on that morning and four units from Leixlip and Maynooth fire services were sent to the scene. There were several thousand secondary school students on the campus at that time for an open day and they stood with staff and under-graduates in shock and disbelief,as the restaurant was destroyed.
The easy option for the management at Maynooth would have been to rebuild/restore the original building to its former glory; life would return to normal, status quo would be restored. To their credit the management decided to take this opportunity and transform the existing site. They decided that the new restaurant, which would be named the “Phoenix”, would rise just like the mythical creature, from its own ashes and live on for years to come.
The Phoenix Restaurant, as pictured above, was the finished product delivered after two years of hard work. The building is a wonderful example of modern architecture, with its state of the art facilities, which has won the approval of all the students and staff at the university. As for the prospective students who were there on the day of the fire, well, they returned in large numbers to attend the university.
Maynooth had the largest number of college applications for 2012 which is a vote of approval for a management team, who, when faced with adversity used the opportunity to instigate change and became all the stronger for doing so.
Phoenix Restaurant, NUI Maynooth 