CCVEC funds scholarship under land deal

Another unorthodox land deal involving County Cork VEC has emerged and is being scrutinised by the Department of Education.

It involves the long-term lease of a small tract of land in Schull in exchange for CCVEC funding an annual student scholarship in the name of the landholder, Ulrike Crespo.

The deal originally bound CCVEC into a €20,000 per year scholarship for the next 100 years in honour of the Crespo family, who owned the site alongside Schull’s outdoor education centre.

However, this was not approved by the department and after the deal was signed, CCVEC had to renegotiate it in a bid to get retrospective agreement.

It has ultimately had to divert income generated by the outdoor education centre to help fund the scholarship that is tied to the unapproved land lease. This will continue until 2109.

A renegotiation process has halved the cost of the lease from €2m to €1m.

However, it has still to be approved by the department and is subject to ongoing consultation between officials and CCVEC.

The committee, which has been subjected a number of separate inquiries into its corporate governance and lease deals, agreed to a lease the land for the Fastnet Marine Outdoor Education Centre. No definitive project details have been tabled for the site.

Crespo scholarships of €2,500 were awarded to four students of Schull Community College last year. However, concerns were raised that no checks had been carried out to ensure the awards did not result in some students also getting grants from Cork County Council.

CCVEC said it could not check on this issue because of data protection concerns.

The problems with the lease were raised in 2011 and this triggered the renegotiations last year.

Internally CCVEC has conceded that while this was a legacy issue it may face consequences as a result.

The land had previously been earmarked for a hotel.