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Costello slams Bord Snip proposal to axe Grangegorman project

Issued : Thursday 16 July, 2009

The proposal in the McCarthy Report to axe the Grangegorman Development Agency, abandon the Grangegorman project entirely and for the Dublin Institute of Technology to transfer to Tallaght is ludicrous in the extreme .It smacks of academic jealousy.

Colm McCarthy’s institutional employer, UCD, transferred from a prime site in the south inner city in the 1960’s and it appears that Mr. McCarthy does not believe that the DIT should be allowed consolidate on a prime site in the North Inner City.

The DIT is the largest third level institution in the country. Its six faculties are scattered throughout the Inner City, North and South, in such places as Cathal Brugha Street, Bolton Street, Kevin Street and Mountjoy Square. It is intended that the sale of the properties will part-fund the development of the new campus at Grangegorman, which Mr. McCarthy doesn’t seem to be aware of.

Transfer of the project to Tallaght would have no financial benefit to the exchequer as a new site would have to be purchased. Likewise, there are no immediate capital savings since the project is planned as a public private partnership. Moreover, the money and time spent on three years of planning, preparation and consultation with the local community would be wasted.

There was a theory doing the rounds of armchair academic circles that neither Croke Park nor Lansdowne Road should have been redeveloped on their existing sites but transferred to greenfield sites on the periphery of the city. That would have been a disaster for the sporting organisation, the sporting public and the city businesses.

The Doheny & Nesbitt school of economics has the same academic and blinkered view of the Grangegorman project.

The ideal place for the DIT campus is exactly where it is proposed, in the heart of the city. 20,000 students in the North Inner City will invigorate the local Dublin 7 community and boost the local business sector.

The Grangegorman campus will be serviced by the new public transport Broadstone Luas line.

It is important that the Government has changed its mind and agreed to the publication of the Bórd Snip Report so that there is time to consider its more substantial proposals and to identify and discard ‘back-of-beer-mat’ proposals where they occur as in this case.