Big on spectacle, empty on substance
Successive pre-election promises to turn it into a national education and innovation centre have been big on spectacle but empty on substance.
However, one private sector company saw potential in the dilapidated former boarding school and was prepared to develop it into an up-market training facility. It wanted to invest €3.2m to transform the erstwhile De la Salle campus into a live-in education centre for international workers looking for vocational qualifications.
However, despite detailed proposals and a warning letter to Richard Bruton, the enterprise minister, the private sector proposer got disillusioned by what it described as three years of “bureaucracy” at Údarás.
It was instead courted by the incentives put on the table by the Welsh government and, failing a spectacular intervention, it expects to locate itself in the principality.
The company, Trident Safety Group, envisaged that up to 120 people would be employed at the new complex within three years of opening.
At any one time, up to 40 students would be living on-site for the duration of their 12-14 week course.
The run-down edifice would be completed in 18 months, according t builders who assessed the project.
And the main ask of the economic development agency for Irish-speaking areas, Údarás na Gaeltachta, was that it would give the private firm the former college and its 15 acres for a nominal sum. In return the firm, Trident, would deliver the centre and, on completion, sign back a portion of the complex to Údarás with a view to it use as an incubation space for start-up businesses.
Trident also wanted to house two of its subsidiary companies in Ballyvourney, where it already has a presence in the Údarás industrial park.
A deadline of Mar 31, 2011, was set to finalise the deal and proceed to a formal memorandum of understanding but the project never got that far.
The company’s technical director, Bernard Walsh, explained that Údarás told it that its constitution would not allow the agency to sign over the college for a nominal sum. Instead it proposed a lease agreement for up to 30 years. Trident turned the agreement down.
Mr Walsh said proposals were already in the public domain to subsume Údarás into the IDA and Enterprise Ireland and it was not prepared to invest a significant amount of money into such an uncertain situation.
After three years of engagement but no result with Údarás, Mr Walsh said so far, the response from the development officials in Wales has very different.
He likened it “an open cheque book”. And, as a “proud Irishman” he was dismayed that he could not bring the deal to fruition in the Muskerry gaeltacht.
“[The Welsh authority] sent me details of factories which they would renovate to suit our needs or sites that could be developed for us. The total cost for us would be effectively nothing,” he said.
When the deal appeared to have terminally broken down, Mr Walsh wrote to Mr Bruton. He said he had been talking to Údarás for three years and had “spent a considerable amount of time and money preparing this proposal and relating documents” but Trident pulled the plug when “again we have heard nothing positive in reply”.
“My fellow directors have decided to take a completed offer from the north Wales development authority who have heard of our plans through one of our English companies and who have offered complete support for this proposal to be positioned in north Wales,” he said in his letter of Jul 4, 2011.
Mr Bruton’s private secretary wrote back to say the company’s proposal to jointly develop the site with Údarás was with the minister.
However, a statement from the minister’s office said it was felt inappropriate for him to interfere directly in the situation. This was because the enterprise minister does not have jurisdiction when it comes to gaeltacht areas, or specifically Údarás’ issues.
The matter was sent to the relevant Department of the Gaeltacht, headed by Jimmy Deenihan, which contacted Údarás and who in turn wrote to the company.
This correspondence is understood to have related to a sister request, by Trident, for a grant to cover the €78,000 it spent pursuing the project.
Údarás had sought further information and, it said, it had not been given what it required. “Údarás na Gaeltachta has confirmed to [Mr Walsh] their interests in this outline proposal and have suggested to him that a comprehensive development and investment plan be prepared in relation to the commercial redevelopment of the facility.
“Mr Walsh has submitted an application to An tÚdarás seeking grant-aid support towards the costs of completing this overall development plan.
“An tUdarás requested additional information from Mr Walsh in Apr 2011 in relation to the application for funding and still await same. Upon receipt of the outstanding information, it was intended that the executive recommend grant-aid support for the completion of the development plan to the Board of Údarás na Gaeltachta for their consideration and approval,” it said.
This request related to the €78,000 grant rather than the substantive property issue which Trident said caused it to withdraw from the deal. The company’s insistence on owning the site was rooted in its concern for the future of the state agency. Mr Walsh said Trident’s finance officials were conscious that proposals were floated to merge Údarás with either the IDA or Enterprise Ireland.
And it was unwilling to invest more than €3m in a building it would not own. This was outside the normal supports on offer from Údarás. Although it has a range of incentives available to coax clients and it had been keen to get somebody to take over the site which it has already had to invest in to secure its roof.
Údarás had already examined the potential for offloading Coláiste Íosagáin as part of its study of the cash-generating potential of selling non-core assets.
Cllr Des O’Grady (SF), called into question Údarás’ ability to generate employment in the region.
In this regard, its record is underwhelming. Between 2008 and the end of 2010 the number of fulltime employees at Údarás supported companies in Ballyvourney has fallen from 690 to 615.
Údarás has blamed a lack of state funding for its difficulty in delivering jobs in its designate areas.
Trident Safety Group was prepared to invest €3.2m to develop an international training college for industrial safety standards.
The company planned to sell single-term specialist residential courses to pharmaceutical, medical devices and chemical companies worldwide. It would focus on the accreditation needed to handle and oversee the movement of hazardous materials.
Courses would last for between 12 and 14 weeks, with a rolling set of programmes throughout the year.
It would have been developed around the historic, but decaying, Coláiste Íosagáin in Ballvourney, Cork.
In the first three years after it opened, Trident predicted there would be 120 full-time jobs required for the various business activities involved.
But technical director of Trident, Bernard Walsh, said it was “very ambitious” about the long-term potential of the Ballyvourney complex.
To seal the deal, Trident wanted to buy the old college for a nominal sum and demolish the non-protected outhouses and handball alley at the rear.
The college itself would then house lecture halls and exhibition spaces on the ground floor, with offices and meeting rooms on the other two floors.
Space had been reserved for accommodation buildings looking onto the back of the building where a special area of conservation would be landscaped.
The company would pay for all renovation work, along with a park walkway along the small Bohill river that meanders around the campus. A coffee shop and additional office space were pencilled in for a second phase of building.
To compensate Údarás, Trident proposed developing a section of the complex to specifications that would suit the agency’s purposes. This was expected to be a type of incubation unit which Údarás could use to attract new or fledgling clients.
Ownership of this part of the building was to be transferred back to Údarás as soon as Trident completed the training centre. Terms for this had not been spelled out.
Builders PJ Hegarty’s had assessed the site and Trident expected building work to take 18 months.
It would retain the college’s outer walls but gut the inside, which is in state of considerable decay.
Around the courtyard up to 40 bedrooms would accommodate course participants, of equivalent standard to a three-star hotel.
Catering would be outsourced to a local company, a spin-off that was not included in the company’s original jobs’ estimate.
Coláiste Íosagáin was a favourite for pre-election promises during the boom years and its derelict state is a testament to what has happened since.
It has long been talked about as being the future home for a specialist third-level training college for Irish language and cultural activities.
In 1999 the then education minister, Michael Woods, travelled to the newly acquired Údarás na Gaeltachta site to turn the sod on the £1.5m national education centre.
He reckoned the plan was one of the most significant in the history of Irish language education.
Planning was supposed to begin before the turn of the century. But the sod turning was as far at that project got. It was resurrected when the election loomed in 2007.
Then all the talk was that it would be reformed to become not just the national education centre but also a cultural interpretive centre.
Minister Mary Hanafin revealed the new €3.5m plan that was even more ambitious than the earlier proposal and it would be paid for with public money.
The latest confirmation of a broken commitment to Coláiste Íosagáin came in October 2010 when then tánaiste Mary Coughlan confirmed the Government had pulled the money earmarked to remodel the site.
The former all-Irish secondary school was run by the De la Salle order until it was closed down in 1989.
It fell into disrepair over the next decade before, in 1997, the entire campus was put up for sale for £500,000. This provoked fear that it would fall into the wrong hands and the heritage attached to one of Cork’s most historic sites would be lost.
The Department of the Gaeltacht approved the purchase of the campus. Údarás, which runs the industrial park adjoining Coláiste Íosagáin, put in an offer and took over the complex from the De la Salle order in 1998.
Nothing has been done with it since then aside from money spent to carry out pressing repairs.
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