October 2025, Dublin City UniversityThirty-two years later, I’m back in a university hall, this time the Helix Theatre in Dublin City University. He graduated with an honours degree at the ripe young age of 82 – first up on stage that afternoon – “very appropriate to be the first to receive his parchment”, I said to my brother. As a young fella, I equated a solid education, including university, as a means to get a job, any job, at a time when the unemployment rate was 25 per cent for young men. James O'Reilly, with his sons, outside the Helix Theatre in DCU. Maybe not education to position yourself to financially capitalise on the qualification, but learning for the pure fun of it.
