Three private consortiums have so far expressed interest in building the new national conference centre in Dublin, which was given the go-ahead by the Cabinet on Tuesday.
Dublin business and tourism interests yesterday welcomed the confirmation by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, that the Government is to hold a competition among developers who wish to build a new 2,000-seat conference centre. Ireland remains the only EU capital not to have such a facility, having seen several false starts over the past 12 years.
The chief executive of Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Ms Gina Quinn, said that such a centre would be "a milestone on the road to the recovery of Ireland's tourism industry". The Irish Hotels Federation described it as a "major positive development for the economy".
According to Mr O'Donoghue's plan, the site and construction would be paid for entirely by the private developer, with the State guaranteeing in return to lease the completed premises for an agreed number of years.
Announcing details of the plan yesterday, Mr O'Donoghue said that a key element of it was the financial arrangement, which would ensure that it did not affect the general Government balance. The Government intends that the construction would be paid for entirely by the private sector, leaving the Government free to spend scarce resources - or borrowed money - on other infrastructure projects.
A steering group of senior officials will meet within 10 days to get the project under way. The steering group will consist of the secretaries-general of the Department of Tourism and of the Office of Public Works, as well as senior officials from the Department of Finance and Fáilte Ireland.
Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development authority, will now prepare a specification for the centre, following which the Office of Public Works will organise a public procurement process.
Mr O'Donoghue said that he wanted the centre built "as soon as possible". However, the procurement competition, planning process and construction time are likely to ensure that it will be at least four years, and possibly considerably longer, before the project is completed.
There was immediate speculation yesterday that the Treasury Holdings/Harry Crosbie consortium, whose plan for such a centre at Spencer Dock was abandoned in 2000 after ancillary hotel and apartment developments were refused planning permission, would be interested in this latest version of the project. Mr O'Donoghue would not be drawn on who had expressed interest, but he did confirm that there had been three such indications.
Mr O'Donoghue said yesterday that the Office of Public Works would first consider sites it currently owns to see if any would be suitable. If not, the identification of a site may be part of the submissions made by developers interested in building the centre.
The Minister said that he was "totally convinced of the need for a dedicated national conference centre if Ireland was to realise its full potential in the international conference market".
Ms Quinn called on the steering group to start work immediately. The State had already held two procurement competitions in the past, and while it was required by EU regulations that an open competition be held, given our previous experience, the "length of the project stage should be as brief as possible". She said that the planning stage should be minimised through the use of either the section 25 planning powers available to the Dublin Docklands Development Authority or through the use of the recently-promised Critical Infrastructure Bill.
Mr Jim Murphy, president of the Irish Hotels' Federation, said that the conference centre could attract an additional 50,000 visitors to Ireland each year. "This fundamental piece of infrastructure was always viewed as a serious deficiency in Ireland's offering abroad and it cannot be overstated how important today's decision is for the future of the industry."