Inner-city DIT campus gets green light in €280m deal

Some €280m will be invested in the education sector.

About 12 schools — mostly post-primary — will be built in two separate bundles under the public-private partnership model.

The Government said these schools would be located “across the country, from Clare to Kildare, Cork and Louth”.

But the biggest element of the education package is the green light for the new campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology at Grangegorman in the inner city.

DIT is currently spread across 39 different sites across the capital, some in “poor conditions”, by the Government’s own admission.

The development of a new, single campus at Grangegorman — a 73-acre site formerly home to St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital — has been mooted for several years and the previous administration had committed to part-funding the project.

But last November, the Government announced it was “postponing” funding because of the pressures on the public purse.

The development agency behind Grangegorman insisted the project would proceed nonetheless, and that the gap would be made up with additional private funding.

Now, the Government has effectively changed its mind and announced that public funding will be provided after all.

It said the initial funding being provided would help progress “stage one” of the project.

“This development also represents an opportunity for substantial development and rejuvenation of an important inner city urban quarter,” the Department of Public Expenditure said.

” It will also link in with the Luas as part of the proposed Luas interconnector with a stop provided at the Grangegorman Campus.”