CIT paid extra €300k to buy city property

Competing bids by University College Cork was a factor in Cork Institute of Technology paying €300,000 over the asking price for a city centre property.

It emerged at the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday that UCC was also interested in acquiring the 19th-century building on Cork’s Grand Parade, for which CIT paid €1.25m in 2015. It has paid around the same again to convert it from its most recent use as a bank and make it safe to hold classes for CIT’s Crawford College of Art and Design.

While the asking price had been around €950,000, the college has said it had the building valued at €1.1m before its governing body approved the purchase.