Hotel gets €800,000 rent for music school

OVER €800,000 is being paid annually by the Department of Education to a Cork City hotel, one of more than a dozen premises being used as alternative accommodation by the Cork School of Music, the annual report of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General 2002 states.

The report has stressed that the existing school was vacated before a definitive approval was given to proceed with the plan to build a new school, “because the existing premises of the Cork School of Music were and are clearly deficient and would inevitably have had to be evacuated by the school”.

On June 1, 1999, the Government approved a pilot programme of Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, including projects in the education sector. On foot of this decision, the Department of Education sought and received the approval of the Department of Finance for the provision of five post-primary schools and the extension of the Cork School of Music under PPP arrangements. The extension of Cork School of Music was estimated at the time to cost €12.7 million.