Old Man Belfield
Michael Byrne, affectionately known as Old Man Belfield, was a homeless man who lived for over 30 years on the campus of University College Dublin 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... 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 at the hands of an unknown male assailant.
During his lifetime, rumours circulated that perhaps Byrne "was a retired lecturer, 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 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, 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."
Early life
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, 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.
Armed with these details, O'Herlihy and O'Sullivan visited Ireland's General Register Office in Dublin to retrieve Byrne's birth certificate on which it was hoped would be written his place of birth, and the names of one, if not both, parents. They viewed records for 16 separate "Michael Byrnes", all born in 1949 in Ireland, but none bore the exact same birth date as the Michael Byrne of Belfield. Records from the English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish register offices were also consulted but also proved fruitless.
Miriam McCarthy, a volunteer worker with Dublin's Simon Community first encountered Byrne through her work in the 1970s. At that stage, Byrne was already homeless and living on "a bit of waste land" opposite St. Vincent's University Hospital, where the Merrion shopping centre was subsequently built. Miriam approached Byrne with offers of help, but her attempts at conversation were always met with silence. "As the weeks went on, she brought food and hot drinks to his makeshift hut, but quickly realised that he was deeply private and independent" and so kept watch from a distance, according to The Sunday Independent. As the developers moved in, Byrne moved up along Nutley Lane in the direction of UCD in search of a new dwelling place. Miriam McCarthy "was always involved" with Byrne, according to her son Stephen, "in getting him whatever facilities he needed, be it sleeping bags, food, making sure the soup run at night were in touch with him - she was his coordinator and would have collected his 'few bob' each week".
Eventually Byrne began trusting Miriam enough to visit the family home, where herself and her husband Seán "organised that he would sign on for his pension each week and have a fry up before leaving". Thenceforth, Byrne would visit the home every Thursday, the day the pensions were distributed. During his visits, Miriam would typically share a cup of tea with the man, and try to engage him in conversation, but according to Stephen:
Delivering the eulogy at Byrne's funeral in 2021, Stephen McCarthy recounted that his mother had nicknamed Byrne "the Dreamer", as "she had assumed that all he did all day was dream, and that got him through his day... and maybe that's the way it was". Stephen recalled that his parents "were of the opinion that he might have had some medical treatment that might have affected his speech or that something might have happened in his earlier life" which left him mute.
UCD years
Speaking to the College Tribune, UCD's student newspaper, in 2021, former Arts student Gisèle Scanlon recounted that on a "wet and windy" night in the early 1990s, she had been helped by Byrne in fending off a would-be attacker along an under-lit walkway on campus. As the College Tribune recounted:
"... through the dark and unpopulated area, Scanlon was attacked by a tall and dark-haired man. "This guy just came out of nowhere," she says. "He kind of wrapped his arms around my chest just dragged me to the ground like a rugby tackle." She originally thought it was somebody she knew who was messing about, but soon realised her fears as this stranger tried to assault her". Byrne suddenly appeared and dragged the man off Scanlon, throwing him to the side, and helped her up...
Byrne did not speak at all during the encounter, after which the attacker fled. Many years later in 2018, Scanlon had the opportunity to personally thank Byrne for his help, when she bumped into him not far from Belfield, at a bus stop in Donnybrook. He reportedly smiled and said in a "very pronounced Dublin accent", "similar to Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners": "There's no need to be saying anything like that. These things happen." In the 2022 RTÉ documentary, Scanlon recounted that Byrne's words had been "Anyone would have done it, that's the way life is."
After Miriam McCarthy died in 1996, her husband Seán continued to assist Byrne, collecting his disability pension for him on his behalf. In 2014, Seán moved to a nursing home and from thenceforth their son Stephen McCarthy took on the handling of Byrne's affairs, becoming his agent as well as his designated next-of-kin. Byrne remained homeless throughout, predominantly dwelling on the grounds of UCD.
Following the year 2014, Byrne was still in the habit of visiting the McCarthy family home on occasion, if only to collect his pension, as Stephen recounted to RTÉ:
"Basically, I would collect his pension and ensure Michael would get his few bob every week. My brother David continued to live in the family home for a period and Michael would call religiously every Thursday. Michael continued to live a very quiet life and was well known in the area. The restaurant on campus would look after Michael every other day and the local Spar shop also looked after Michael. But at night Michael bedded down in a very lonely spot in UCD".
Byrne was cared for by a "huge cadre of people", according to RTÉ, consisting mainly of the students and staff at UCD. "He was fed and watered by the canteens on campus and when he wandered the streets of the neighbouring estates he was looked after, especially by the Spar in Woodbine just across the road from UCD". Byrne had a preference for breakfast rolls made using certain ingredients, "which the staff had learned by heart".
In 2014, the Instagram page Humans of Dublin featured Byrne on its page.
Eilis O'Brien, writing in UCD Connections, reminisced about Byrne's ubiquitous presence on campus:
"For over 30 years Michael lived in quiet corners of the UCD campus. His footsteps are ingrained in the paths of Woodbine, Nutley and Greenfield, across the N11 flyover into the campus, through the front gates, up the main avenue, by the side of the lake, and along the Oak Walk – settling behind Conway when the weather was poor and over by Rosemount when it was warm. He slipped into buildings, strolled through the science atrium – to the surprise of visiting academics attending conferences. He was a regular in the restaurant, the SU shop, and at other eateries and cafés where he was given his meals or cups of tea and sat amongst the students. His quiet calmness seemed to spread to the students – osmosis-like. Everyone knew Old Man Belfield – or felt that they did".
Ní Shúilleabháin, then a professor in the School of Maths at the university, recounted that Byrne was partial to sitting on the ground floor of the physics building, which was "home for him", and over the years if there had been a tea or coffee social event in the faculty, the lecturers would invite him to join them.
Byrne's sleeping habits were described thus by Stephen McCarthy:
At one point, Byrne was offered a home by Dublin Corporation, behind the Tara Towers hotel in Booterstown, but turned it down, preferring to continue living the life he had by that point known for decades. In the snow of 2017, a doctor came to the door of the McCarthy household to enquire about Byrne's wellbeing, and the two went in search, and eventually found that "UCD had opened a room for him and left him out coffee and biscuits each day and that's how he got through that period".
The Irish Independent noted that for the 72 years that made up his life, he had lived outdoors for at least 50 of them. Despite his age, Byrne continued to sleep rough on campus into his 70s.
UCD administration, as well as security, "kept a watchful eye over Michael", making sure he was safe during inclement weather and protecting him "from being pushed out of the area", according to an article published in the College Tribune in November 2020, shortly before he died.