The Digital Hub Development Agency has promised that the views of the local community will be central to their plans to develop a new city quarter in the Liberties and Coombe area of Dublin.
The pledge came as the agency launched the latest five-year development plan for the Digital Hub project yesterday.
Community, enterprise and public sector representatives agreed 28 principles that will inform the implementation of the plan, which highlights the need to create a "family friendly" and sustainable community.
The plan outlines the aims of the Digital Hub project under the areas of enterprise and research, community, education and training as well as property and heritage.
The agency hopes that when the project is finished in 2012, 150-250 digital media companies will operate on the nine-acre site in south Dublin, employing up to 3,000 people. Some 76 companies are already based at the site, employing 600 permanent full-time workers.
The development outlines plans to create "family friendly" housing units ranging in size from 80sq m to 100sq m. Housing will make up about 30 per cent of the development on the site including a minimum of 10 per cent social housing and 10 per cent affordable housing.
Philip Flynn, chief executive of the DHDA, said yesterday that in the 14-month period since the end of the last phase of development in December 2005, there had been a 50 per cent growth in the number of companies using the site. He said this showed that there was considerable interest and demand to locate in the area.
The DHDA said that approximately 25 per cent of companies located in the Digital Hub are foreign direct investment and it is hoped that there will eventually be a 40/60 balance between foreign and indigenous companies.
Dr Stephen Brennan, director of marketing and strategy at the agency, said it was envisaged that by the end of the process the Digital Hub would be a self-sustaining project. The project has benefited from €73 million in Government investment and hopes to make a return of €111 million.
Mr Flynn said that "lessons have been learned" from the demise of Media Lab Europe, the research institute set up in 2000 by the Government with the co-operation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was forced to close in January 2005.
The Digital Hub project has a number of learning programmes operating in 17 local schools and the development plan details proposals to develop these programmes as well as to provide greater access to digital technology in the wider community.
Peter Cassells, chairman of the Community Public Private Partnership (CPPP) process, said that they had learned from what had happened elsewhere when the community wasn't properly consulted on projects.
Enterprises based at the Digital Hub range from start-ups to international firms such as Zamano and Amazon.