The Hierarchy also wanted to counteract the "Godless Colleges" of the Queen's University of Ireland – established in the cities of Galway, Belfast and Cork.

[3] On 18 May 1854 the Catholic University of Ireland was formally established, with five faculties – of law, letters, medicine, philosophy and theology – with John Henry Newman (later Cardinal) as the Rector.

[5] As a private body, the Catholic University was never given a royal charter, and so was unable to award recognised degrees, and suffered from chronic financial difficulties.

In 1861, Dr Woodlock tried to secure land for a building near Holy Cross College Clonliffe, the establishment to be known as St. Patrick's University.

Though they held the foundation money as trustees, the hierarchy in 1859 sent most of it to support an Irish Brigade led by Myles O'Reilly to help defend Rome in the Second Italian War of Independence.

According to Lytton Strachey[10] Eventually he realised something else: he saw that the whole project of a Catholic University had been evolved as a political and ecclesiastical weapon against the Queen's Colleges of Peel, and that was all.

The recognition of its graduates by chartered institutions (the RCSI) ensured its success, unlike the associated Catholic University.

), F.R.C.P.I., Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacy, was also Dean of the Faculty at Cecilia Street, the CUI was renamed University College Dublin in 1882.

Similarly the Doctor and Anglican missionary Marie Elizabeth Hayes was studied in Cecilia St.

[15][page needed] In 1915, the NUI awarded honorary doctorates to a number of former students of the CUI.