Discussions about a public private partnership (PPP) scheme to fund the new Dublin Institute of Technology campus will begin shortly between the Departments of Finance and Education. The campus, at Grangegorman, north Dublin, will cost about £150 million over 10 years and the partnership will be the biggest attempted in the Irish education sector. Other third-level institutions are also being asked to submit potential PPP ideas to the Department of Education, Science and Technology.
DIT hopes to teach the first classes at its new campus by Easter, its president, Dr Brendan Goldsmith, said yesterday. Apprentice classes normally taught in Bolton Street will be first to move to Grangegorman. The faculties of applied arts and built environment would be the next to move, he added.
Dr Goldsmith told The Irish Times he favoured the PPP idea because it would free management to concentrate on teaching matters rather than issues relating to infrastructure.
He said that while he supported PPPs, he did not favour ending all involvement by DIT staff in issues relating to buildings and infrastructure. He added that the involvement of a private consortium would have little impact on the current buildings department of DIT, whichis relatively small.
PPP schemes involve private consortiums building and managing large projects on behalf of the State or State-funded bodies. The consortium accepts the risks and responsibility for the project. PPPs normally run over 20 years and, during that period, the State repays the consortium and eventually takes back the property.
The discussions now hinge on whether all of the Grangegorman campus will form part of a PPP. There will be considerable cost savings to the Government if it goes down this route.
In some educational PPP projects the builder both provides and equips the premises. The two Departments will have to decide whether this should happen in DIT's case.
Dr Goldsmith said a separate part of the Grangegorman project would be the establishment of residences for 650 DIT students. He said the DIT currently provided no student accommodation and the new residences would be funded from private sources.
He said the Eastern Health Board, which is selling the Grangegorman property, would retain some of the buildings attached to St Brendan's Psychiatric Hospital for a time. They are needed by some of the psychiatric patients who are still receiving treatment at St Brendan's.