Institute redevelopment to cost €200m and create 3,000 jobs

Three thousand jobs are to be created through the expansion of Limerick Institute of Technology as part of a €200m redevelopment.

The college wants to complete the project at its base in Moylish, and at the Limerick School of Art & Design in the city centre, over the next 20 years.

Yesterday, LIT president Maria Hinfelaar said: “It’s a very ambitious plan — it’s not as if we haven’t been developing for the past 20 years — but we need to prepare ourselves for the next 20 years.”

She said the first phase of LIT’s ambitious masterplan will take it forward to 2030.

“That’s how far we are looking ahead,” she said. “It will involve an investment of about €200m. The funding for the first phase of that [about €20m] is already in place, and that’s from our own resource capital development fund and also some funding has come from the Department of Education.”

Details of the development will not be made public until the autumn. However, it is expected that 3,000 jobs will be created over the course of the project — the single biggest expansion of a third-level institution outside Dublin.

Dr Hinfelaar is to officially unveil the masterplan in September, but plans have already been presented to a range of stakeholders, including the worldwide American Ireland Fund — both in New York and San Francisco.

The plan, when finalised, will satisfy a minimum 30% expansion of LIT’s student body from 6,000 to more than 9,000 full-time students. The expansion will take place on a phased basis, with the first phase commencing in 2013.

Dr Hinfelaar said it is an exciting time for LIT and hopes the masterplan will act as a “catalyst” for the revitalisation of the city, which is one of the country’s worst unemployment black spots.