Construction work on the long awaited €60 million Cork School of Music moved a step closer yesterday as the Department of Education confirmed that negotiations with German firm Hochtief to build the school are nearing completion.
A Department of Education spokesman said he expected that the contract for the project would be signed with Hochtief at the end of this month, with construction work due to start on the school "a short time later".
"We're at the tail-end of negotiations with Hochtief... much of the preparatory work for construction has already been done so I would expect work to commence a short time later."
The Department of Education has spent the past number of months ensuring that Hochtief's takeover of the Cork School of Music contract from troubled British firm Jarvis was in line with European Union public procurement regulations.
Last December Hochtief bought Jarvis's Private Finance Initiative bidding business for £1.2 million sterling and it later exercised an option to take over Jarvis's contract for the building and management of a number of Irish schools including the Cork School of Music.
Under the original contract with the Department of Education, Jarvis agreed to build, equip and maintain the Cork School of Music for 25 years at an annual cost of €8.2 million to the state in a public-private partnership deal.
According to the department of Education spokesman, the deal with Hochtief is virtually the same as that which the Department agreed with Jarvis and he expressed confidence that the new Cork School of Music would be completed by September 2007.
The project was originally given the go-ahead by the then minister for education, Noel Dempsey, in March 2004 but it ran into difficulties when Jarvis developed financial problems and eventually had to sell off its PFI unit to Hochtief.
There are some 3,361 students at the Cork School of Music and they've been attending classes at 18 different locations around Cork for the past year since the old school closed in 2004 to allow work commence on preparing the site for the new building.
The new school has been designed by Murray Ó Laoire Architects and provides some 12,000 square metres of facilities at the Union Quay, including a 500-seat flexible auditorium, a recording studio, a library, 55 tuition rooms, a rehearsal hall and lecture rooms.