Free schooling offered to attract world bankers

Top international bankers are to be lured here with a promise of free international schooling for their children.

Junior finance minister Eoghan Murphy said the school is part of a number of measures aimed at bringing at least 10,000 international financial services jobs here by 2020.

The school — intended for the north inner city — would provide an international curriculum and would be free of charge to the children of those who work in the IFSC or who live in the area.

Mr Murphy said: “If you are moving with a family as some will be, they want to know that there is an educational offering be it an international baccalaureate [examination], which some will already have children in that model abroad, or Educate Together.

“I have spoken with the Taoiseach and with Richard Bruton about making sure that we get a location and a site in for a school that is offering the international baccalaureate and we get it in the city centre.”

He said the school could be co-located with an existing school and added that “there is a lot of potential if you look into Paschal Donohoe’s constituency [Dublin Central] for a school to be there, it would be very good in terms of location”.

Mr Murphy said offering facilities such as schools and other infrastructure is essential to bring new business and employment into the country with a knock-on effect for employment.

“If you look at the kind of benefits that come from jobs being created anywhere, the person is employed but then there are all the ancillary services that come from that,” he said.

“We have to be mindful that we have an offering that can continue to allow us to create jobs... I know it may sound simple but it is that simple, we need to make sure that we are well placed to continue to have investment in our economy.”