About The Agency

Introduction

St. Brendan’s Hospital
The site at Grangegorman has a long history in serving the people of Dublin since the establishment of the Houses of Industry for the poor in the 1770’s. Throughout the 19th century the site evolved to become a large regional mental hospital occupying over 30 hectares of land in the north inner city, just over 1km from the city centre. At its peak the hospital served over 2000 patients. In the 20th century changes in care of the mentally ill have moved away from large institutions, to the situation today that there are less than 100 patients on-site. The health provision is being refocused on local community health facilities and supports for the local aging and disabled communities under the auspices of the Health Services Executive (www.hse.ie). For more details, see the Grangegorman pages.

The Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)
The DIT is one of Ireland’s largest third level institutions, providing a range of applied, professional and technological programmes from apprentice through to undergraduate and  postgraduate level and masters and doctoral research activities for over 20,000 students. The DIT was established as an autonomous institution in 1992 with the merger of a number of Colleges, but its origins go back to 1887. For more information see the DIT website ( www.dit.ie).

A single campus and the establishment of the Agency
History has meant that DIT is spread across a large number (39) of small sites across the city. The spread and quality of accommodation has proven increasingly difficult to the proper functioning of a modern third level institution. The DIT identified Grangegorman as an ideal location for a unified campus as it has the capacity to accommodate all the Institutes activities and yet maintains the traditional city centre location. The health bodies also wished to maintain some services on the site.

A  Government Inter-departmental working group was set up to review the future of the site. A summary of their consultants recommendations and the full report are available on the Government website at:
www.taoiseach.gov.ie/

This report formed the basis for a Government decision in 2002 to establish an Agency to develop the Grangegorman site on behalf of Education and Health. The legislation to establish the Agency was enacted in 2005.

The full act is available to download from the legislation page.

Functions of the Agency

  • Accept the site and other properties.
  • Prepare a strategic plan & planning scheme.
  • Decide appropriate procurement strategy
  • Consult with relevant organisations
        (DCC, Residents, Public Reps, CIE, …. )
  • Arrange for a communications strategy
  • Carry out campus construction
  • Dispose of DIT properties
  • Handover new facilities to DIT/HSE on completion