The JJB facility, GAA stadium and what about RTE?

More light has been shed on the failed deal between DkIT and the GAA over a proposal to build a stadium at the Dublin Road campus. At the PAC last month, Meath TD Shane Cassells said the financial position of the college means the IT ‘ has very limited capacity to invest in infrastructure and facilities’ and he asked about ‘ the ambitious plan by the college, in conjunction with the Louth County Board of the GAA, to build a 12,000 seater stadium’. And he wanted to know whether the college had lost money in the failure of the project to get off the ground.

The vice president for finance and corporate affairs, Peter McGrath, said: ‘ In 2013, we invested in a sports facility close to the college and that facility also included a portion of the land of the time. The plans was to acquire more land adjacent to that on which this GAA stadium was to be built.

‘As far as I remember, it only entered into discussions and it never got to a detailed planning or actual investment’. Mr Cassells wondered about the cost of the project which estimated a €3 million investment each from the college and the County Board.

Mr McGrath said: ‘It fell through mainly because of the finance of it. Finance was not available either from ourselves or the GAA at the time. From our point of view, there was not any major investment in getting planning or consultancy work or anything like that done on that particular project’.

DkIT president Ann Campbell added: The GAA has walked away so that stadium is not planned any more’.

Mr McGrath was also asked about the acquisition of the JJB facility. ‘We invested in a sports campus in 2013 which became available through receivership. Student accommodation was part of that. We built one small piece of accommodation, but that has stalled over the recession as well. We actually have very little accommodation available’.

And weeks before the opening of DkIT Sport Ltd, the company who was going to lease the sports equipment to the college said it couldn’t meets its obligations and despite wanting to rent from the supplier, the colleg found it had to buy some of the equipment, with the operator of DkIT Sport purchasing the rest.

Mr Cassells wanted to know ‘what arrangement is in place with RTE in terms of working with students on campus and so forth?’ Ms Campbell said: ‘RTE has a studio on campus. I do not know the detail of the work it does, but I know it interacts with students’.

The Meath TD said the broadcaster ‘is obviously a tenant of DkIT’. Ms Campbell said: ‘It is a tenant of DkIT and it is in the building where creative media students are. It is very close to the students, so synergies arise from that, but I am afraid I do not have the detail’.